How Programmable Calculators and a Sci-Fi Story Brought Soviet Teens Into the Digital

[vaklaff]

Thomas Okken Wrote:Unlikely? It doesn't sound surprising to me, I thought the Soviets were generally very big on education.

Yes, it's true for the Osblock in general, STEM education was solid (and better than today, IMHO). The other side of the coin was the indoctrination in humanities (well, at least the effort was there, the results not so much :-)).

Thomas Okken Wrote:Intersting article, though, and now I am curious about that calculator. Is there any information about the B3-34 on the Internet that isn't in Russian?

UPDATE -- There is some information linked from the article, but not very complete. I'd be interested to see the programming model explained, and specs like number of program steps and registers etc.

For basic info there are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elektronika_B3-34 or https://www.rskey.org/b3-34 but I guess you've already seen them. As for programming, my understanding is that it was the more or less the same for all the subsequent models up to MK-52, so if you look at http://www.wass.net/manuals/Elektronika%...nglish.pdf (translated by jebem, I believe) you should get a pretty good overview.