Promin

1963 · Machine / system

First Soviet mini-computer, testbed of stepped microprogram control

Promin in the timeline

1963 Promin: the first Soviet mini-computer

Glushkov's Kyiv institute puts the Promin ('Ray') into series production at Severodonetsk: the first Soviet mini-computer, with metallized-card memory and the first widely used stepped microprogram control. The scheme is never patented abroad: the USSR does not belong to the international patent union.

1967 IBM buys a MIR-1 in London

At a London exhibition IBM purchases the displayed MIR-1, the only Soviet computer ever bought by an American company. The motive, Glushkov later learns, is prior art: proving to a competitor holding a 1963 patent that stepped microprogramming had run in Soviet series machines since the Promin.

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