Online event “MEOM: Ukraine’s Iron-Curtain computer, its pioneers, and their legacy” (подія в архіві)

One of Europe’s first programmable, stored-program computers 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 will 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.

Registration: www.eventbrite.co.uk/...​gacy-tickets-863649869007