MEOM: Ukraine’s Iron-Curtain computer | TNMOC Talks

One of Europe’s first programmable, stored-program computer was born in a rundown former monastery outside Kyiv - on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

Abbreviated MEOM (Мала Електронна Обчислювальна Машина) in Ukrainian, or Small Electronic Calculating Machine in English, it was the result of three years’ work by engineers and technicians at Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences.

They produced a giant that comprised 6,000 vacuum tubes and was capable of 3,000 operations per minute. Ukraine’s team worked without the large-scale resources of US projects like ENIAC, and outside the intellectual and engineering networks that produced Manchester Baby, EDSAC and LEO in the UK - yet their impact was arguably profound.

Join Yurii Yushchenko, Ph.D, and Oleksandr Bezrukavyi, M.Sc, as they shine a light on MEOM and its pioneers.

They discuss working under the eye of Soviet state forces, the role of a select group of women programmers, and how MEOM’s unique features allowed it to shape computer architectures in the Soviet Union and the West. Among the topics: creation of Addressable Programming Language, its contribution to Pointers years ahead of PL/I – and how APL’s ideas can be found in object-oriented programming, databases, artificial intelligence and more.

About the speakers:

Yurii Yushchenko holds a Ph.D. Physical and Maths sc. from the Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University and is an associate professor at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv, Ukraine.

Oleksandr Bezrukavyi M.Sc. is a computer engineering from Kherson National Technical University, Ukraine. He has experience of working in college, enterprise and NGO IT, IT history research and a scriptwriting.

Recorded April 16th 2024.