Khrushchev's 1959 Visit To IBM 54
harrymcc (1641347) writes In September of 1959, Nikita Khrushchev, the premier of the Soviet Union, spent 12 days touring the U.S. One of his stops was IBM's facilities in San Jose, which helped to create the area later known as Silicon Valley. The premier got to see the first computer which came with a hard disk, which IBM programmed to answer history questions. But what he was most impressed by was IBM's modern cafeteria. Over at Fast Company, I've chronicled this fascinating and little-known moment in tech history, which will be covered in an upcoming PBS program on Khrushchev's U.S. trip.
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No, put that swastika flag away. He's the hammer and sickle guy.
wait (Score:4, Insightful)
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A big factor in the demise of the Soviet Union was Stalin. It was never supposed to happen that way. I don't think Lenin really foresaw such a scenario when the Bolsheviks established the government of the Soviet Union. Stalin was really just a power-hungry egomaniac who would have changed his colors to facilitate his rise to power no matter the political situation. He would have been a staunch advocate of the monarchy in Britain, or of representative democracy in the United States. Anything to get to the t
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Sure... And every other Russian President has been a success story for Socialism? No. The Soviets hurt, killed, starved, controlled, were awful to the people. Maybe you want to give communism another go, eh? dipshit...
Re:wait (Score:4, Insightful)
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What they have in China is no longer Communism, it looks more like Fascism.
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To come full circle on the topic -- it's facism brought to them by IBM and the like, and to come full circle on your remark, those wonderful facilities of facism are being imported back into the US post haste.
IBM meanwhile is making a killing.
Fixed that for ya.
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Actually, no, it wasn't Stalin's.
In Stalin's era USSR was developing faster (actually, like 4+ times faster) than the West. He started with retrograde agricultural country and ended up with a nuclear superpower.
Hitler's economy was insanely good too.
And hell, yeah, we know about the price for both cases, no need to remind.
As far as USSR's economic growth goes, in Khruschev times it was still more than healthy, twice faster than the West.
However , in Brezhnev's era at some point in 70th it simply stopped gro
Stalin was Hitler's secret ally at first ... (Score:5, Informative)
You know without someone like Stalin at the helm, the USSR might not have survived WWII. Cold, brutal, but effective :( Clearly the man was a monster -- but I think people forget that the bulk of the fighting in Europe during WWII was on the eastern front, not the western; by the time D day happened, the Germans had mostly been defanged, by the Russians.
Stalin did not save the Soviet Union. The Soviet privates, corporals, sergeants, farmers and workers saved the Soviet Union despite Stalin's stupidity.
Stalin was Hitler's secret ally at first. He actually helped start WW2. Stalin's non-aggression treaty with the Nazis had secret parts where Stalin and Hitler agreed to split Poland and other countries, it defined the respective Nazi and Soviet sphere's of influence of Eastern Europe. So Hitler's invasion of Poland, the event that triggered WW2 in Europe, was in fact done with Stalin's blessings. It was not until Hitler invaded the Soviet Union that Stalin fought against Nazism. If the Soviets had a leader that was a true ally of Britain and France and stood against the Nazi's and promised to defend Poland as Britain and France had done there may have been no WW2. Plus with a different leader the Soviets may have fought more effectively during the early parts of the war. Stalin and Hitler were very much alike in many ways. Besides brutal murderous dictators who killed millions of their own people, they erroneously thought themselves military geniuses and through their idiotic orders destroyed their own armies.
To be honest, Stalin expected that the Nazi's would invade, it just happened years before Stalin expected. He ignored one piece of evidence after another indicating an imminent invasion preferring to cling to his earlier personal expectations. His military incompetence was largely covered up, however since the Soviet collapse Red Army records have become available to western historians and his incompetence has been shown to be far greater than imagined. The west was aware of his various pre-war purges that decimated the leadership of the Red Army, officers being selected for loyalty to Stalin rather than military competence, and the previously mentioned self-denial regarding imminent invasion by the Nazis. Today the world knows, via official Red Army communications and unit records/diaries that some of Stalin's so called great military successes were pure propaganda fantasies. For example official Red Army documents show that Stalin did **not** order the Red Army to fall back to draw the Nazi's deeper into Soviet territory, with longer and more difficult to defend supply lines, and draw them into a trap. He actually ordered units to stand and fight at all costs, to not give any ground, much like Hitler did. Again, the two were so much alike. However the Red Army collapsed and retreated in a disorganized and somewhat panicked manner. The Nazi's going too deep and over extending their lines had more to do with Hitler's idiocy of pushing forward at all costs. Both Hitler and Stalin were incompetent military strategists whose idiotic orders destroyed their own armies. The Soviet Union was only saved because of huge reserves it could pull from Asia, including armies from Siberia that were well equipped for brutal winter warfare.
Fighting on eastern front was not in isolation ... (Score:3)
You know without someone like Stalin at the helm, the USSR might not have survived WWII. Cold, brutal, but effective :( Clearly the man was a monster -- but I think people forget that the bulk of the fighting in Europe during WWII was on the eastern front, not the western; by the time D day happened, the Germans had mostly been defanged, by the Russians.
While it is true that the bulk of the fighting was on the eastern front this did not occur in isolation. Allied fighting in Africa caused armored forces to be diverted from the invasion of the Soviet Union to Africa. In particular this included the one German commander who would and could get away with openly defying Hitler's orders. Field Marshal Rommel. A commander of such stature and trust in the German military that when Rommel asked an SS general what he would do if his (Rommel's) order contradicted Hi
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The Russians as a whole defeated the nazis. Stalin's incompetence did nothing more than spill more Russian blood. WIth someone more competiant, the Soviets would have had less casualties and conquered more of europe.
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bullshit. See post below.
The Russians as a whole defeated the nazis. Stalin's incompetence did nothing more than spill more Russian blood. WIth someone more competiant, the Soviets would have had less casualties and conquered more of europe.
This.
Winston Churchill said "Battles are won by slaughter and manoeuvre, the more a general contributes in manoeuvre, the less he demands in slaughter", Stalin and to a slightly lesser extent, Hitler were prime examples of this. Stalin used almost no strategy, relying on brute force and numbers to win battles, he chose objectives out of pride rather than value. In a way, this was good for the west, we emerged stronger than the Soviets because our leaders were more restrained, listened to the advice of t
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the United States never stopped making tanks, bombers, fighters, rifles.
Today, we have by far the largest military in the world, the majority of all types of heavy equipment and vehicles, such as aircraft carreiers, etc...
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Corn (Score:2)
True story.
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A year later after all Russians are sick of corn, he is deposed.
If they had known how to make booze out of corn, they wouldn't have been sick of it.
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Given Soviet rates of alcoholism, if they had known how to make booze out of corn they would have been sick from that too.
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First post!
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Walking on water (Score:5, Interesting)
Kind of off topic but we have a picture of my father, Jack Harker, walking on water in front of the sculpture. He was manager of "The Labs" and was working with manufacturing to introduce their first Winchester disk drive. The technology was not moving successfully from the lab to the shop. There were some tremendous technical problems in mass producing the drives. Manufacturing gave a very aggressive schedule for solving the problems. My father replied that if they could meet the schedule, he would walk on water.
Manufacturing meet the schedule and the disk drives were delivered. My father had a plywood platform built and painted dark placed just under the surface of the reflecting pool. True to his word, there he was walking on water with the sculpture in the background.
A picture I did not understand fully until after his death.
Jack Harker, one of the fathers of the disk drive industry, a manager's manager, a great dad.
Walking on water (Score:1)
http://blogs.hds.com/hu/2013/05/remembering-jack-harker.html
Kitchen debate (Score:1)
This visit to IBM-San Jose was about two months after the "Kitchen Debate" [wikipedia.org] at the exhibition of US consumer products in Moscow.
In Soviet Russia... (Score:2)
Came looking for Soviet Russia. It did not find me. Left disappointed.
Whether you like it our not... (Score:3)
History is on our side. We will bury you!
Interesting Cafeteria Story in Reverse (Score:4, Interesting)
In sort of a mirror image of this story, some U.S. scientist was led on the usual dog & pony tour of Soviet space facilities (a publicly available one at any rate). Of course the tour included a display of huge rockets, advanced sattelites, etc. etc. to trump up the superiority of Soviet science.
Interestingly enough, after the tour the scientist came away convinced that the Soviet Union was hopelessly behind. It had nothing to do with the rockets though. Instead, he noted that when they ate lunch at the cafeteria, the cafeteria workers had to total up their lunches using an abacus. Big propaganda show-pieces are impressive, but it's the little things that show you what's really going on.
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Instead, he noted that when they ate lunch at the cafeteria, the cafeteria workers had to total up their lunches using an abacus.
Ever seen a race between an experienced abacus (or slide rule) user and calculator user? Often times, the old technology wins.
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"experienced abacus (or slide rule) user"
Now your cafeteria is in competition for yet another worker skill and that against your engineering department, and it is hard to substitute a different employee if an abacus expert is out sick.
Compare that to a modern fast food restaurant, where running the cash register may not even require literacy so it's a buyers market for labor.
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Now your cafeteria is in competition for yet another worker skill and that against your engineering department,
Using an abacus (or slide rule) was taught in many countries in grade school and was (might still be in some contries) a prerequisite for a high school diploma (or its equivalent). The experience and speed comes from working with one on a daily basis in a checkout line.
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I don't know whether to believe you or not. On the one hand, it sounds like a snide remark, intended to be silly. On the other hand, in 2000 I taught school at a magnet school in one of the ex-satellite countries (Lithuania), and they do use abacuses to tote up lunches. Nothing huge about that; it's not done everywhere, but if that's how the lunch lady wants to operate and it works, more power to her.
I think it was a mistake to consider them behind because they mix new technology and old. All these discussi
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That's interesting. I vaguely recall Krushchev being despondent about the Soviet Union's chances at matching/overtaking the US, after a visit to south
IBM, then flush twice.... (Score:2)
Khrushchev saw the writing on the bathroom wall...