- Ural (computer)
Ural is a computer series built in
Soviet Union .History
The Ural was developed at the Electronic Computer Producing Manufacturer of
Penza in the Soviet Union and was produced between1959 and1964 . In total 139 were made. The computer was widely used in the 1960s, mainly in thesocialist countries —Hungary had three, for example—though some were also exported toWestern Europe andLatin America .Attributes
Models Ural-1 to Ural-4 were based on vacuum tubes (valves), with the hardware being able to perform 12,000 floating-point calculations per second. A binary, single-headed device. One word consisted of 40 bits and was able to contain either one numeric value or two instructions. Ferrite core was used as operative memoryFact|date=May 2008.
A new series (Ural-11, Ural-14, produced between 1964 and 1971) was based on semiconductors.
Function
It was able to perform mathematical tasks at computer centres, industrial facilities and research facilities. The device occupied approximately 90-100 square metres of space. It consumed triphasal flux (380V±10%/50Hz) and contains a triphasal magnetic voltage stabiliser with 30kVA capacity.
Main Units
Keyboard unit, controlling-reading unit, input punched tape unit, output punched tape unit, printing unit, magnetic tape memory unit, ferrite memory unit, ALU (arithmetical logical unit), CPU (central processing unit), power supply unit and electron tubes (6N8 type).
Trivia
*
Charles Simonyi , who was the second Hungarian in space, stated that he would take old paper tapes from his Soviet-built Ural-2 computer into space with him: he kept them to remind him of his past. [http://go.sosd.com/servlet/nrp?cmd=sty&cid=RIM&pgn=1&ino=1061860&cat=Science&lno=1]References
External links
* [http://www.computer-museum.ru/english/galglory_en/rameev.htm Bashir Iskanderovich Rameev] , chief designer of Ural series, article on Russian Virtual Computer Museum web-portal
* [http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/best_enemy/chapter_05.htm "The best enemy money can buy", Chapter V, "Computers - Deception by Control Data Corporation"] , book byAntony C. Sutton
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