Yuri Rogachev: "I came to do M-1, not knowing computer technology"

Now Yuri Vasilievich is 94 years old, but he remembers very well how in the early 1950s the M-1 was created – the world's first digital computer in which logic circuits were built on semiconductor elements. In an interview with the museum project DataArt Rogachev, a story about the development of its element base and arithmetic unit. But this story began earlier, when Yuri Vasilievich served in the army.

Radio operator

– In computer technology, I came by accident. The beginning should be considered the time when I was drafted into the army of a 17-year-old and enlisted as a radio operator. I am a country boy from the Tver region, the radio is something unattainable for me. And suddenly, having arrived at the military unit, I begin to work with him.

Junior Sergeant Rogachev. 1944 year

After a month of quarantine and specialty training in February 1943, our unit was sent to Transbaikalia, on the border with Manchuria. Here I met my first radio station. It was called a 6-PC. Portable, weighing 12 kg. Packaging with food and supplies – another 12. This is a burden for young soldiers – so that you can keep in touch on the go. I served in the artillery regiment, in heavy artillery. We had 152 mm cannons with a range of up to 18 km. And here I am with a radio station, firemen – with 48-pound shells.

I, a country boy, was very interested. Even when they just got on the phone in the field, I liked it. You press the button and talk with a person who is two kilometers from you. For 1943, it was something!

Then I took a telegraph key training course, mastered the Morse code and learned to transmit information very well. It was worse with the reception, but after about six months I was already pulling at a second-class radio operator, that is, I could transmit about 30 groups – that's 90 characters per minute. I was awarded the rank of junior sergeant and made the head of the radio station. Until August 1945, my regiment had a normal life as a signalman, and then the war with Japan began. At night from August 8 to 9, we crossed the border and headed to Hailar. It is 120 km from the border.

Soviet infantry crosses the border with Manchuria. August 9, 1945

War with japan

Hailar is a city with a fortified area and underground utilities. 69 bunkers and about the same number of bunkers were buried in hills at a depth of 17 meters. Underground – a real city with an area of ​​about 21 square kilometers with its own communication system. Few people knew about this, our intelligence also did not have complete information. We traveled these 120 km with our big guns in three days, without encountering resistance. The Japanese were not prepared because the war was declared at 8 pm Moscow, when morning had already arrived. On the third day, we were met by prisoners. We saw what it is.

Captured soldiers of the Kwantung Army

Stopping two kilometers from Hailar, radio operators and scouts took up positions, dug in. Meanwhile, the advance detachment passed us and captured the city, in which there was only the Japanese garrison on duty. All the troops were in the dungeon – this is about 6 thousand soldiers. They had barracks there, three-story houses. Upstairs are gun or machine gun nests. They ran into our very first infantry regiment and died almost completely. Some part of it was saved by the foreman, who ordered the soldiers to retreat. The officers did not have the right to give such a command.

On the night of August 11, I with a radio station, two topographers and scouts went to the fortified area. The day before this, the reconnaissance of the regiment had already tied on the cards where it is located and where we are located. Heavy artillery fires in its own way. Side observation posts and the point from where the shooting is being organized are organized. All of them are attached to the map by theodolites and other devices. Scouts, whose communication I provide, report their coordinates, which are also fixed. So a picture is drawn of how they will shoot.

ML-20, 152 mm howitzer, model 1937

For us, the war began on August 11th. To survive the Japanese from the pillboxes, they began to shoot. They answered with their fire. But our guns are very strong – 152 mm, they shoot accurately, sniper. We destroyed a wild number of these bunkers and about one and a half thousand soldiers. Those that jumped out. When the pillbox was broken, the Japanese began to suffocate due to damaged ventilation.

We left on August 15, we already had nothing to do there. Those who still resisted were finished off by machine gunners, and our Amur flotilla approached. When we crossed the Khingan on the 18th and entered Central Manchuria, the commander of the Kwantung Army signed an act of surrender. On the same day, the Hailar fortress surrendered, 1200 live Japanese came out of it.
Although the war was almost over for us, terrible moments did occur. There were raids – the Japanese people are warlike. But gradually we destroyed those who hid and resisted and returned to Russia somewhere at the end of September.

Yuri Rogachev after the war. Already sergeant

Radio master

After the war, the first stage of demobilization began. In November-December 1946, sergeants began to be released, who served for 6 years and fought on the Halkin-Gol. Among them is a radio master who served our radio station. A good person and specialist, I learned a lot from him. And he recommended me in his place. This was my first step towards computing. I was sent to the courses of radio masters, in the communications regiment I studied electronics for 3 months. Learned to solder, repair, deal with circuits. Immediately a radio unit was hung up on me in a regiment, because the head of the unit, the senior sergeant, also served his own. I had to follow the radio stations, charge the batteries, repair. So a year and a half passed, until our regiment was disbanded.

After the war

They assigned us to where. I got to the border, in the military town of Shakhalinor. There were two barracks for officers and a dozen dugouts for soldiers. A section of the border is a fortified area, 12 bunkers, but not like the Japanese. Without an underground connection, with a radio node that has been idle for two years. It’s damp in the bunkers, everything has rotted. I repaired the radio center, established an underground connection. A year later, they gave me a vacation, went to Moscow for a month, and when I returned, I calmly lived to the end of the service. Although life was bad, there was nothing interesting there.

Remains of fortifications in Shakhalinor

My radio host was located in the club. I came there twice a day to turn on the radio. Eight kilometers from us was the Dauria station. I got in touch, I sometimes wanted to be there. I was not afraid of AWOL, because there was no one to catch us – all mine. But how to leave the radio node? I came up with the following. I hung the walkers, on them – the hour hand, for 12 hours she made a circle. He made contacts so that she closed it on the case, and at lunch the radio turned on without me.

Since this method was not very reliable, I later drew a wire from the radio node to my dugout. The telephone operators on duty sat across the wall. I could go anywhere, but according to the schedule, they pressed a button, and the radio turned on.

Meet Brooke

In 1950, after demobilization, I came to Moscow – there I have a brother, also a demobilized radio operator. He worked at the Energy Institute of the Academy of Sciences and said that radio specialists are being recruited in the laboratory. I found out the details and went to Bolshaya Kaluzhskaya, 18. It was the laboratory of the Energy Institute, in which Isaac Brook worked. By that time, he had already received an order for the M-1 and began to develop this machine. I came in March, when Nikolai Matyukhin had already practically done arithmetic.

Yuri Rogachev after arriving in Moscow

I come to the reception. An old woman sits: "Who are you going to?" – "I'm talking about work." She opens the door to the corridor: "Leonid Zinovich, they have come to you." Leonid Zinovievich is an engineer in charge of the economy. He led me down the hall, I began to talk about myself. And then Brooke appears: “Is there a new employee for us?” “No, I answer. “I was discharged, I’m looking for work.” He showed me the documents – in the Red Army book it says that I am a radio master. “Can you solder?” Brooke asks. “Of course, the radio master cannot but know how.” – "What devices did you work with?" – "Oscilloscope, pulse generator …". He: “Okay,” and went into the office. I was taken aback somehow. Then they gave me a questionnaire to fill out and informed that the verification of the data would take about three weeks.

I used this time to settle in Moscow. I come again and they say to me: "Come to work tomorrow." So I became an electrician in the laboratory of electrical systems of the Energy Institute of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

M-1

I come to the laboratory, they tell me that I need to work for several days in the assembly workshop. Her boss Grichushkin immediately gave the task: to wind the transformers and solder some kind of circuit. I sat, soldered. A week later, I was invited to a room in which I had never been. There Brook, Matyukhin and Academician Andronov. In front of them is a fragment of the rack of the M-1 machine. Frame, 6 panels with lamps, 10 in a row – a three-digit four-mode adder.

Brooke tells how it works. I do not know what a binary system is, but I listen carefully. Immediately Natasha, a Brook diploma, who will configure this adder. At some point, Brooke says: “What a car it will turn out, how many lamps there will be! I don’t have so many rooms to accommodate. ” And then he turns to Matyukhin: “Kolya, we have German cuproxes in our warehouse. We need to see, maybe they can be used. ” Isaac Semenovich is an outstanding person. I always understood what he needed, well knew what was in the warehouses of the Academy of Sciences.

Automatic digital computer M-1

We went to the warehouse, took two boxes with cuproxes, and Matyukhin gave me the task: "You will check and record the diodes: direct resistance, reverse resistance." After checking, I realized that the maximum direct resistance there is 5 kilo-ohms, the opposite is the smallest – half a megaoma. No less. The largest is 2 megaoms. Matyukhin began to make a diode circuit in the adder so that the signal passed and the signal did not pass. Of course, I did not understand anything – how this is done in the binary system. Matyukhin made a diagram of what resistance, what voltage is needed. Thus, he dragged me into computing.

All summer I worked for Matyukhin so that he developed a diode circuit with cuproxes. We then drew these schemes, they are in my first publication. As a result, they built an adder, the same as it was on the lamps. But he all occupied one panel. Three categories of 4 lamps, these are 12 radio-tube triggers, the rest of the field is occupied by diodes and resistance. That is a simple scheme. I, as one who knows how to solder, placed everything on this board. On the side of the terminal for connecting voltage – either the battery or the battery. That's it, the layout works.

In August, Brooke demonstrated all this. When everything was already assembled, it turned out 12 triggers, each needs to be monitored. But as? Tester. You turn it on for every trigger and look: where is the plus, where is the minus. At the first test, Brooke says: “Yura, and you put a neon light on a single output instead of a tester. And it will burn. ”

By September, this layout could be demonstrated. Brooke said that this was a revolution, a breakthrough: "The Americans made a car with 18 thousand radio tubes, we will meet a thousand." He had already figured out what kind of car would be, how many discharges. In October 1950, its installation began.

In September, Tamara Alexandridi came with a diploma project to develop a storage device on electronic oscilloscope tubes. The fifth-year student Kartsev came – later it was he who would drive knowledge of computer technology into my head. The fifth course of MPEI is all, practice, I know by myself. By the way, my graduation project was not at all computational: “A control device for semiconductor devices.” I made a simple amplifier, but on a transistor. You could put any transistor in it and see if it amplifies the signal or not.

Front photo of Tamara Alexandridi

When they started to do M-1, I came to this job, not knowing computer technology. When he defended his diploma, they were already doing the M-4. I was assigned as an engineer to the second version of the arithmetic device. I developed a different type of trigger circuit there that didn't go anywhere.

Student

When I started working with Brook, I decided that I needed to go to school. I was advised to immediately go to grade 10. But there were no documents for the 7th grade, everything was lost. I went to the village to restore. The school principal has already changed. The one I knew led me to a new one: "This is our student, he graduated with a certificate of commendation." As a result, I was not even given a duplicate on a blank form with a seal, but a new certificate.

In October, I went to look for a school. It turned out that this is not very simple. Some suggested they go to first grade. But nevertheless, by acquaintance I was enrolled in the eighth grade of Moscow correspondence secondary school. They took it in the middle of the year, in January, but everything is legal. True, I had to pass all the exams that are part of the matriculation certificate – history, economic geography, biology … I even remember that I spoke about instinct on the example of feeding aquarium fish. Studying was not very difficult, because at work colleagues with higher education could always help me.

At the summer, already student practice in 1956

By the way, I did not forget about studying, even when I served in the army. I agreed with the battalion commander that his daughter, a tenth grader, would help me. Received assignments from her in mathematics, solved, and she checked.

Weekdays and Holidays

Matyukhin, Alexandridi, Lavrenyuk, Zalkind, Shidlovsky, who graduated from high school in 2.5 years … Each day of working in this team was like a holiday for me. And indeed, we led a essentially student lifestyle. They came to work from different places – I was from Perovo, Shidlovsky lived in the same house where the laboratory was. Matyukhin needed to get from the current Zelenograd, and he often slept in his office on the couch.

Saturday at that time was a working day, but almost every week in the evening we packed our bags and drove out of town – to Solnechnogorsk, Zagorsk, somewhere else. They set up a tent and spent the weekend outdoors. In winter – the same thing, only met at the train station on Sunday morning and went skiing. Sometimes there were hiking trips – from one station to another.

I worked in Brook’s laboratory until August 31, 1952 and quit, having previously enrolled in college. Next, I was waiting for study at the radio engineering faculty of the Moscow Power Engineering Institute. In July, all my colleagues went south, and I went to the village. Prepare for exams.