MIR computer
MIR (Russian: МИР — Машина для инженерных расчётов, "Machine for Engineering Calculations"; also a pun on мир, "peace/world") was a series of Soviet transistorized minicomputers developed at Kyiv's Institute of Cybernetics under Victor Glushkov from the mid-1960s: MIR-1 (sources place it 1965–68), MIR-2 (1969), and MIR-3 (1974). They were single-user engineering workstations — arguably ancestors of the personal computer — built on a radical idea: the machine should speak the engineer's language.[1]
Stepwise microprogramming
MIR's signature technique was stepwise microprogramming: the hardware's control logic directly interpreted a high-level input language — ALMIR-65, an ALGOL-60-style language with Russian keywords — rather than forcing users through assembler. The MIR-1's keyboard carried whole operation keys in Russian: ВЫЧИСЛЕНИЕ (compute), ВЫВОД (output), ВСТАВКА (insert), РАЗМЕР (dimension), ОСНОВАНИЕ (base), ВВОД (input), ТАБЛИЦА (table), УКАЗАТЕЛЬ (index), РАБОЧЕЕ ПОЛЕ (working field). Numbers could be typed in ordinary decimal form — including floating-point values like 374.3 or 5·10⁻⁷.[2]
- MIR-1 — the prototype desktop workstation; ferrite memory plus drum; arithmetic, elementary functions, and program control from a typewriter-style console
- MIR-2 (1969) — expanded memory, faster, and a CRT display with light pen — interactive graphics years before the personal computer existed
- MIR-3 (1974) — semiconductor memory, the line's last machine
London, 1967
Shown at a London exhibition, MIR drew strong press attention — British coverage singled it out among the machines on show, and the widely reported story says IBM expressed interest while US authorities blocked any purchase. Whatever the details, the exhibit made the point the institute wanted: a machine an engineer could sit at and use, unmediated.[3]
Significance
The MIR machines were workstations in the literal sense — a desk, a keyboard in the user's own language, immediate response, a display. In the lineage that runs MESM → Kiev → Dnipro → Promin → MIR, the series is the clearest step toward the personal computer — and the machine historians cite when crediting Glushkov's institute with anticipating it.[4]
References
- en.wikipedia "MIR (computer)" — series overview and dates
- Glushkov Institute museum — MIRS_u + MIR1/MIR2/MIR3 photo pages, ALMIR-65 description
- Malinovsky, Pioneers of Soviet Computing — exhibition account, design history
See also
- Victor Glushkov · Alexander Letichevsky · Kiev computer
- MESM · Dnipro computer · Address programming language