Google celebrates first Soviet computer

December 25, Christmas day in many parts of the world, was also a day that celebrated the forerunner of the device you are probably using to read this right now. It would surely have passed unnoticed were it not for a Google blog post marking the 60th anniversary of the MESM, Soviet Union and indeed continental Europe’s first electronic computer. On December 25, 1951, the Soviet Union’s Academy of Science, the chief money-giver when it came to new developments, granted formal recognition to the ambitious project, led by pioneering electronics engineer Sergei Lebedev. Work on the computer, the Small Electronic Calculating Machine, had started in 1948, although it was by no means small as it occupied the greater part of an abandoned monastery on the outskirts of Kiev in Ukraine. The MESM ran its first sample program for the anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution two years later. On Christmas Eve 1951, it started full-time operations. MESM was used for top-secret calculations relating to the Soviet Union’s nuclear and missile research until 1957. In a recent interview, Boris Malinovsky, member of Lebedev’s original team, talks of the team’s commitment and describes Lebedev as a “leader as well as teacher.” In 1967, the Soviet Union decided to copy the American IBM computers instead of pushing domestic developments.