A Chip in the Curtain / David A. Wellman

Foreword – Acknoledgements – Preface – 1. The issue – 2. Russian Traditions – 3. The soviet systems – 4. Hardware – 5. Software – 6. Education – 7. Prospects – Notes – Index – The author - Illustrations – Soviet cartoons – “What a clever machine . it actually calculates the losses incurred from its own lack of use.” – “What do we need new technology for, when the old technology is still working?” – Figures – 1. “Reorganization of the Academy of Sciences, in the computing technology area – 2. Relative computational power in the United States and the USSR – 3. Number of millions of ordinary instructions per second that can be executed by a single central processing chip – 4. Physical size of the central prossesing unit per millions of instructions per second – 5. Cost per million of instructions per seconds performed – 6. Density of storage of bits of data per semiconductor – 7. CAD/CAM process – 8. Typical solutions in a USSR computer programming competition – 9. Forces increasing and decreasing Soviet computer usage – 10. The widening computer gap between the West and the USSR – Photographs – Russian educators toor Montgomery Blair High School, Silver Spring, Maryland, in 1986 – First year students in computer and information science at Special vocational-Technical Scholl Nº. 13 in Rostov-na-Donu, 1987 – Tables – 1. Basic performance characteristics of Riad-1 and Riad-2 computers – 2. Modified Riad-2 and early Riad-3 computers

A chip in the curtain explains the Soviet Union's struggle with the development and the application of computers in Soviet society. The USSR´s track record with computers compares poorly to that of the West and contributes to Soviet technical and economic woes. Author David Wellman show how a continued Soviet lag in this area is the trend of the future / Esta obra explica los problemas que afronta la Union Soviética respecto a la informática y su escaso desarrollo en comparación con los países de occidente. El autor nos muestra como el retraso en esta área es una tendencia para el futuro de la URSS.