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In 1951, after the success of MESM, Lebedev decided to advance his career and left the lab he had founded. However, competition for his former position was fierce; some used underhanded tactics to win. As a result, the lab was not operating at total capacity until 1956, when Viktor Glushkov was appointed as its new head.
At thirty-seven years old, Glushkov became the director of Lab#1 after successfully defending his Ph.D. thesis. As a brilliant mathematician, he proposed a solution to Herbert's infamous fifth problem, instantly earning him a reputation as one of the brightest minds in the Union. With his visionary outlook, Viktor saw a way to turn a fledgling computer industry into the lifeblood of progress.
One of Glushkov's first projects was finish to the Kiev (a russification of Kyiv) computer, the first machine in the Soviet Union to use a high-level programming language. One of these machines remained with its developers to assist in routine lab calculations. The success of the Kiev computer motivated the team to develop a new small multipurpose computer intended for industrial use called Dnepr.
Sergey Lebedev
and his colleagues at work
in the Automation and
Energy Laboratory in Kyiv
The success of the Kiev computer spurred the team to design a new small multipurpose computer intended for industrial use — Dnepr.
The Computation Center #1 staff
working on the Dnepr multipurpose
control computer, mid-1960s.
Dnepr (a russification of Dnipro) was built in record-breaking speed, taking only three years from blueprints to fully installed computers at several production sites. Unlike its predecessors, it was based on transistors, eliminating the need for energy-hungry vacuum tubes and cooling or ventilation systems. Despite being roughly the size of a fridge, it was much smaller than the 20-square-meter MESM.
Glushkov adjusted the lab’s status twice to give researchers more resources and expand their current projects. First, it became a Computing Center, and in February 1962, it finally became the Institute of Cybernetics of the Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, allowing for the team expansion.
In 1963, in the western Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod, the Kyiv-based Institute of Cybernetics and a local university organized a small symposium, which both Glushkov and Lebedev attended to make a deal. From then on out, Lebedev's team would focus on developing large computers, while Glushkov's Institute would concentrate on smaller, more specialized machines. These machines would eventually become the precursors to PCs.
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