Ural ( rus, Урал) is a series of mainframe computers built in the former

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...

History

The Ural was developed at the Electronic Computer Producing Manufacturer of

Penza Penza ( rus, Пе́нза, p=ˈpʲɛnzə) is the largest city and administrative center of Penza Oblast, Russia. It is located on the Sura River, southeast of Moscow. As of the 2010 Census, Penza had a population of 517,311, making it the 38th-l ...

in the Soviet Union and was produced between 1956 and 1964. The computer was widely used in the 1960s, mainly in the

socialist countries A socialist state, socialist republic, or socialist country, sometimes referred to as a workers' state or workers' republic, is a sovereign state constitutionally dedicated to the establishment of socialism. The term ''communist state'' is oft ...

, though some were also exported to

Western Europe Western Europe is the western region of Europe. The region's countries and territories vary depending on context. The concept of "the West" appeared in Europe in juxtaposition to "the East" and originally applied to the ancient Mediterranean ...

and

Latin America Latin America or * french: Amérique Latine, link=no * ht, Amerik Latin, link=no * pt, América Latina, link=no, name=a, sometimes referred to as LatAm is a large cultural region in the Americas where Romance languages — languages derived f ...

. The

Indian Statistical Institute Indian Statistical Institute (ISI) is a higher education and research institute which is recognized as an Institute of National Importance by the 1959 act of the Indian parliament. It grew out of the Statistical Laboratory set up by Prasanta ...

purchased an Ural-1 in 1958. When the

University of Tartu The University of Tartu (UT; et, Tartu Ülikool; la, Universitas Tartuensis) is a university in the city of Tartu in Estonia. It is the national university of Estonia. It is the only classical university in the country, and also its biggest ...

received a new computer in 1965, its old Ural 1 was moved to a science-based secondary school, the

Nõo Nõo is a Populated places in Estonia, small borough ( et, alevik) in Tartu County, in southern Estonia. It's located about 15 km southwest of the city of Tartu by the Tartu–Valga, Estonia, Valga–Riga railway and the European route E264 ...

Reaalgümnaasium, making the latter one of the first Soviet secondary schools to receive a computer. The name of the computer was also used to coin the first name for "computer" in Estonian, ''raal'', in use until the 1990s until it was replaced by the word ''arvuti'' ("computer"). School 444 in Moscow, Russia started graduating programmers in 1960 and had the Ural computer operating by its students on-premises in 1965.

Attributes

Models Ural-1 to Ural-4 were based on

vacuum tube A vacuum tube, electron tube, valve (British usage), or tube (North America), is a device that controls electric current flow in a high vacuum between electrodes to which an electric voltage, potential difference has been applied. The type kn ...

s (valves), with the hardware being able to perform 12,000 floating-point calculations per second. One

word A word is a basic element of language that carries an semantics, objective or pragmatics, practical semantics, meaning, can be used on its own, and is uninterruptible. Despite the fact that language speakers often have an intuitive grasp of w ...

consisted of 40

bit The bit is the most basic unit of information in computing and digital communications. The name is a portmanteau of binary digit. The bit represents a logical state with one of two possible values. These values are most commonly represente ...

s and was able to contain either one numeric value or two instructions.

Ferrite core In electronics, a ferrite core is a type of magnetic core made of ferrite on which the windings of electric transformers and other wound components such as inductors are formed. It is used for its properties of high magnetic permeability couple ...

was used as operative memory beginning with the Ural-2. A new series (Ural-11, Ural-14, produced between 1965 and 1971) was based on

semiconductor A semiconductor is a material which has an electrical resistivity and conductivity, electrical conductivity value falling between that of a electrical conductor, conductor, such as copper, and an insulator (electricity), insulator, such as glas ...

s. 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. The computer ran on

three-phase electric power Three-phase electric power (abbreviated 3φ) is a common type of alternating current used in electricity generation, transmission, and distribution. It is a type of polyphase system employing three wires (or four including an optional neutral ...

and had a three-phase magnetic voltage stabiliser with 30kVA capacity. The main units of the system were:

keyboard Keyboard may refer to: Text input * Keyboard, part of a typewriter * Computer keyboard ** Keyboard layout, the software control of computer keyboards and their mapping ** Keyboard technology, computer keyboard hardware and firmware Music * Musi ...

, controlling-reading unit, input punched tape, output punched tape, printer, magnetic tape memory, ferrite memory, ALU (arithmetical logical unit), CPU (central processing unit), and

power supply A power supply is an electrical device that supplies electric power to an electrical load. The main purpose of a power supply is to convert electric current from a source to the correct voltage, current, and frequency to power the load. As a r ...

Models

Several models were released: * Ural-1 – 1956 * Ural-2 – 1959 * Ural-3 – 1964 * Ural-4 – 1962 * Ural-11 – 1965 * Ural-14 – 1965 * Ural-16 – 1969

Trivia

Charles Simonyi Charles Simonyi (; hu, Simonyi Károly, ; born September 10, 1948) is a Hungarian-American software architect. He started and led Microsoft's applications group, where he built the first versions of Microsoft Office. He co-founded and led In ...

, 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