The Ludwig von Mises Institute

Tu Ne Cede Malis

Advancing the Scholarship of Liberty in the Tradition of the Austrian School

Source link: http://blog.mises.org/6262/the-socialist-calculator-debate/

The Socialist Calculator Debate

February 15, 2007 by B.K. Marcus

SHARE IT:

Email This

Which do you prefer, this beautiful little calculating device … or one of these 72 Old Soviet Calculators collected at EnglishRussia.com?

Thanks to Isaac Bergman for bringing the commie calculators to my attention.

(Actually, the cartoony owl calculator for Soviet tots is kind of cute.)

{ 6 comments }

Vladimir Dzhuvinov February 15, 2007 at 2:26 pm: Despite these ugly and not so sexy calculators, the Soviets were the first to send a human being into space
Vanmind February 16, 2007 at 1:46 am: Yep, the Soviet government beat the American government to space.
P.M.Lawrence February 17, 2007 at 12:36 am: Ha! For ingenuity and a good story about how a plucky inventor avoided being ripped off, see the Corta.
Bill February 17, 2007 at 11:28 am: I am sure they functioned much better than western counter parts at least according to the Soviet Government.

As for beating the US into space. The commies really screwed the US on that one. They got the US to copy their theft of the wealth of their citizens to launch peopel into orbit when those millions of citizens would have gladly used that money elsewhere.

Of course that is not how the Soviets and US governments sold it. They were “Beating” the other side into space.

The funny part is that the Soviets WON!!!!! Aren’t the Russians and other citizens better off for it?
P.M.Lawrence February 17, 2007 at 11:40 pm: Drat, finger trouble. I meant the Curta hand-held mechanical calculator (I wonder if the USSR ever ripped that off?).
averros February 18, 2007 at 2:22 am: Quite nostalgic, if you ask me. I used to own some of the same devices. They didn’t tend to last long, though.

BTW, did you notice that most of them are called “Electronika” though they look quite different? That’s not because they were made by the same company, but rather because they were made by the plants reporting to the same ministry (Ministry of Electronic Industry).

(The “Iskra” (“the spark”) ones were made by plants reporting to the Ministry of Instrument Production, and, believe me, the application of the revolutionary quotation “From the spark the flame will arise” to those beasts was a running gag between engineers).

Re: Curta – I’ve never seen anything like that in the USSR; the common mechanical calculators (“arithmometers”) were called Felix, and apparenly were clones of antediluvian Rheinmetal ones (I’ve also seen some Mercedes mechanical computers, which definitely were pre-WWII manufacture). The most commonly used computing devices were abaci:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abacus