Kyiv Post. 10 January 2002. Computer logs 50 years in Ukraine.
Between the race to build an atom bomb and the race to the moon, there was a race to develop the computer. Engineers in the United States built ENIAC, while Kyiv's Serhy Lebedev created MESM for the Soviet Union. Lebedev is credited with building the first computer in continental Europe, known as the electronic calculating device, or MESM. The 50th anniversary of his achievement will be marked during celebrations on Jan. 15 and 16 at the National Academy of Science. Lebedev began work on the MESM in 1948 in Kyiv. From a laboratory in a former Orthodox monastery, Lebedev and his colleagues constructed what was dubbed the "small computer," despite the fact it took up half the two-story building. Once completed, MESM possessed the main features essential to modern computers: memory, control, and arithmetic using binary code. In 1951, while Lebedev was working on the MESM, there were only two similar computers in the world: EDSEC in England and ENIAC in the United States. His work on MESM won Lebedev a job as director of the Institute of Precise Mechanics and Computer Technology in Moscow, where he continued to work with computers until his death in 1974 at age 72. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews
