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back to article How a pair of American spies created the Soviet Silicon Valley

Few stories in computing history come close to matching the tale of Zelenograd – the Soviet Union's attempt at creating something along the lines of Silicon Valley. Episode 15 of Semi-Coherent Computing recounts the tale of Zelenograd's founding along with the stories of the two US-born Russian spies behind the city. No one …

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  1. Ally

    And it was the British secret service...

    that gave the Russians the secrets of silicon technology after the US had banned the technological transfer of the older Silicon Germanium technology. My ex boss was unwittingly involved

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  2. Martin Owens

    American view

    It's funny, you always hear how the Americans were a side theater in the world war in the UK; and in the American story you always get the impression that Britain was a silly little country that was save heroically by the US and never came up with anything useful: like Radar (Alexander Watt), the Jet Engine (Sir Frank Whittle) or computing (Alan Turing).

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Very, very interesting!

    Can't way for part 2. History -- gotta love it.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Boffin

    Somewhat related

    This reminded me of another book presentation on computing before and during WWII: "Between Human And Machine:Feedback, Control and Computing Before Cybernetics". The standard Amazon template "Customers who were interested in X also were interested in Z" applies:

    http://mitworld.mit.edu/play/20/

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  5. Mage Silver badge

    WW2

    The Russians and their Winter beat the Germans, not the USA.

    The main US successes was in Pacific (helped by others). Really a separate war.

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  6. Andrew Badera
    Stop

    @Martin

    Radar? First effectively created in the US by Albert H. Taylor and Leo C. Young of the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.

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  7. preethi
    Paris Hilton

    It was only.....

    me and my c**t that the americans haven't invented.

    Kind Regards,

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  8. Stephen

    hope its worth the price

    I bought this book based on this post! Bit expensive at £25 from amazon UK :(

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  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Unlistenable

    Kill the damn background music. It makes something which should be interesting unlistenable.

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  10. Jacob Lipman

    Argh.

    Fascinating episode, probably the best yet. Gimme part 2!

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  11. dodgyedgy
    Coat

    hmmm

    Very interesting stuff!

    but in future you need to drop the BG music down by 3dB at least, its too loud.

    cheers!

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  12. Ian Michael Gumby
    Unhappy

    @Martin...

    I seem to recall that it was England who cut off funding for Whittle only to re-instate it after the Germans started getting a successful jet off the ground.

    And Mage, You seem to forget the simple thing called "Lend Lease program". Where do you think the Allied forces got their weapons?

    Or the daylight raids on German factories?

    Oh there is so much more... for something that happened a little over 60 years ago, it seems the world has forgotten so much.

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  13. Ishkandar

    Lend-Lease

    The American tanks "lent-leased" to Britain were so hopelessly outclassed by the German tanks that they were virtually death traps. However, the American, in their arrogance ignored the British requests for up-gunned and up-armoured tanks and went to war with the same models.

    During the American landings in North Africa, the Afrika Korp shot up so many American tanks that there were wild exaggerations of the German strength to "explain" away their failure. The Americans were only saved by their possession of masses of artillery !! German tanks used to sit out of range of the American tanks and pot them one by one while the American tank ammo would bounce off the German tanks like peas !! The Grant and Sherman tanks could barely match the Panzer III which were already obsolete. They were out-classed by the Panzer !V which were being phased out and they were hopelessly out-classed by the Panther just coming into operation by then !!

    The good thing from the Lend-Lease were the destroyers used in the Atlantic convoy battles !! Those were desperately needed and they did a sterling job fighting the U-boats !!

    And, *NO*, U-571 did *NOT* capture the enigma machine that broke the German codes, no matter what Hollywood says !! Those codes were broken at Bletchley Park using a very early form of computing (IT angle !!) .

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