Scanners in the USSR - how it all began
With the advent of the new year, social network users unearthed an old filmstrip (a kind of slide show with captions) “In 2017” in their caches. Its authors in an intelligible form tried to tell the Soviet kids what the world will be like 57 years later on the anniversary of the Great October Revolution: Robots, video communication, space travel, nuclear trains.
I'm interested story use and application of the scanner in the USSR.
Terms and brief technical details:
→ Image Scanner
→ Information input / output devices.
→ How a scanner works and works.
Progenitor Scanner→ Phototelegraph
→ Scanning technology
Images from the 1957 animated film:
But only in the year 1953 V.M. Fridkin, who had just graduated from Moscow University, created the first Soviet photocopier, and later developed the theory of xerography. The future, as we know, came much earlier than 2017, which with regards to scanners - for sure.
In the Soviet Union, copying and duplicating machines (hectographs) were considered strategic, were necessarily registered in the KGB, and the strictest records were kept of who copied what and where.
"Erica" takes four copies, - Sang in the famous song of Alexander Galich (hint, as you understood, on samizdat ...)
For the unauthorized use of copying and scanning technologies in the USSR, it was possible to “sit down” years on 10.
"HUNDRED YEARS UNDER THE BAN, OR ABUSE OF HECTOGRAPH"
The beginning of the spread of computer technology in the USSR opened up a new field for innovative developments. At the end of 80, a group of young engineers from Institute of Automation and Electrometry SB RAS initiated the creation of a projection scanner.
Information:The Russian Academy of Sciences was established by Emperor Peter I Decree of the Governing Senate of 28 in January (February 8) of 1724. Recreated by the Decree of the President of the Russian Federation of November 21 1991, as the highest scientific institution of Russia. Historical milestones RAS.
Having achieved some success, colleagues organized a cooperative and started creating and promoting their development. The result of their work was a projection scanner Uniscan, which combined the capabilities of a scanner and a modern digital camera. It had 72 megapixel resolution. This resolution allows you to see the individual eyelashes on the image of a person with the format A0.
Tripod Scanner
The image in 72 megapixels at the end of 80's turned out so
The first scanner samples made it possible to obtain black and white images or images in grayscale. "Open the world in all its amazing dullness!" - joked in the brochures. The refined design of these models also did not differ. Later light filters were added to the design, and from that moment the scanner allowed to get full-color images.
The Uniscan scanner was used for receiving and processing images in the printing industry, for text recognition and database creation, in cartography and design, for creating digital copies of rare books in state libraries, for macro and micro photography of fixed objects. The combination of a scanner with a microscope turned out to be a very demanded forensic medical examination - the Uniscan scanner turned out to be the best that was offered in the world for these tasks.
Microscope with Uniscan scanner
As far as I understood this issue, this initiative group of young engineers in 1995 (already in the Russian Federation) founded Uniskan LLC in Novosibirsk.
Uniskan LLC still works quite fruitfully now..
Scanners for entering slides made it possible to qualitatively enter information from transparent media. This is usually either flatbed scanners with a special slide module, or drum scanners. Their main use is publishing and cartography. By the way, until recently, the teletype, using the principle of a drum scanner, was used to transmit page layouts of central publications throughout the former USSR.
Of course, we were not the first in this area:
The first SEAC drum scanner *, Russell Kirsch and the background scanner control panel. 1957 year, United States.
But not outsiders.
Soon in the USSR appeared "hand" scanners:
From the domestic coding devices with freely movable sight, PKGIO is known - “Semiautomatic Coding of Graphic Information Optical” (the optical part is, apparently, a viewfinder in the form of a magnifying glass with a crosshair and built-in induction coil). The kit also includes an electric pencil and keyboards: a double (Russian and Latin, as well as an additional one with Greek letters) a push-button keyboard and a keyboard in the form of a table with holes, into which you have to stick an electric pencil - it is mounted on the tablet next to its working field. The resolution of the device reaches 0,1 mm.
I would like to note a special category of scanning (or rather, copying) equipment — espionage (or reconnaissance).
Note: Spying is the illegal intelligence activity of bodies (their agents) of foreign states, which, as a rule, involves the abduction of officially classified information (state secrets) by the special services of other states.
The best-known (or rather, the "famous") special means are the Cinnamon, Winter and Tan photocopiers.
Cinnamon photocopier (from Keith Melton Spy Museum archive)
The effectiveness of the use of rolling machines, as well as the need for fast and high-quality copying of a large number of documents, prompted the developers of NJL-11 (a specialized laboratory that was part of the Operational and Technical Directorate). KGB of the USSR) to create a portable rolling photocopier for A4 documents. In the new camera with the name “Cinnamon,” the document was covered with a pressure glass of the working side of the device (with dimensions like that of the A4 format), and the mirror-prism mechanism moving inside the device was evenly scanned through the document under the action of a spring.
For uniform illumination of the document, a special thin and long illuminator, like fluorescent lamps, was used in the Koritsa, which moved with a mirror-prism mechanism. Its movement, as well as the transportation of photographic film, was provided by a spring cocked by a side lever for shooting a single frame. The Cinnamon cassette contained up to 400 frames of standard 35 mm film and could quickly be replaced with “fresh” in the light in a few seconds, which made it possible to copy a large number of documents. The aperture of the lens was selected depending on the sensitivity of the film. Cinnamon had a frame counter, as well as a convenient shutter lever that worked from both the right and left hand. To power the Cinnamon illuminator, a standard 110 / 220 volt electrical system could be used, as well as a 12 volt voltage through the vehicle's cigarette lighter socket.
Set of apparatus "Cinnamon" (from the archive Keith Melton Spy Museum)
Cinnamon turned out to be a very effective machine for quickly copying a large number of documents, for example, when the officer-curator received secret documents through a cache from his agent for a fairly short time, copied them in the car, observing the conspiracy requirements, and after completing the work, returned them to the agent prearranged by. “Cinnamon” was also actively used in safe houses and in hotel rooms, where the documents received for the period of time were delivered and returned to official storage after photocopying. The dimensions and weight of the “Cinnamon” together with the power supply unit and pre-loaded photographic cassettes made it possible to transfer the entire set in a regular briefcase or attache case, which ensured the conspiracy of the whole activity of working with the device both in the car parked or in motion, and for document shooting in room.
Operational units of the KGB actively used “Koritsa”, noting the simple setup and convenient control of the device, in connection with which the serial production of “Cinnamon” was organized at the Krasnogorsk plant, where the unit was assigned the factory index C-125.
Later, the KGB prototype, developed for using 16 mm film with an electric motor to drive a mirror-prism system and a film transport mechanism, entered the operational divisions of the KGB. The new device "Winter" was smaller in size and provided copying of the A4 document in two times with overlapping of each half of the sheet. The “Winter” cassette was designed for 400 frames, contained 6 meters 16 mm photo films with double perforation and sensitivity from 45 to 700 units. GOST. Photographing one frame began after the lever-switch shifted to the right with the thumb of the right hand, and was performed for 2,5 seconds. The power supplies included in the “Winter” package ensured that the device operated from the 12 volt automotive network and from the standard 110 / 220 volt electrical network.
Despite the smaller dimensions and the presence of the electric drive, the Zima device was not actively used in operational practice. According to KGB officers, the device often lay for years in the storage areas of operational equipment and was taken out only for the annual inventory. According to experts, copying the A4 document for two times turned out to be inconvenient, and many operatives preferred the old Cinnamon.
Photocopier "Winter" (from the archive Keith Melton Spy Museum)
In the middle of 1980's. A prototype of “Cinnamon” and “Winter” appears, the camera “Tan”, for copying a full sheet of А4 to 16 mm film with electric drive of the mirror-prism mechanisms of film scanning and transportation.
The Zagara cassette was designed for 400 frames, the kit also included two more cassettes. Thus, "Tan" could provide a relatively fast copying of more than a thousand sheets of documents.
Photocopier "Tan" (from the archive Keith Melton Spy Museum)
However, the new “Tan” was not actively used, perhaps because of the relatively large weight (more than 3 kg) and increased dimensions, which, most likely, turned out to be inconvenient for operational officers in the case of transportation of “Tan”, which was already difficult to place in standard portfolio. In the second half of the 1980's. began the active use of computer scanners, on which copying was much easier compared to the bulky “Tan”. All this led to the fact that the factory party "Zagarov" has not found application. New kits of this device were stored for a long time in the warehouses of operational equipment until it was instructed to send the entire batch to NIL-11 for destruction or possible use of individual blocks, assemblies and parts.
So ended a century of highly effective use by the KGB units of rolling cameras, which gave a lot of necessary and especially important for the USSR documents, including copies of materials in rare languages, when the requirements of high definition of the negatives were particularly high. Today, in the arsenal of modern intelligence, there are various household digital devices that allow, without any camouflage, it is quite open and easy to scan documents and drawings of any complexity.
By the way, to the scanners include the camera of the spacecraft Luna-9, Luna-13, side cameras Lunokhod, cameras Venus. And a real scanner can be considered Luna-19 and -22. The camera was a linear photosensitive element that scanned the image of the surface of the Moon moving under the vehicle. Snapshot:
Today, without scanners, we can no longer imagine our normal life:
Computer processing of photos in the USSR (1987)
That's all that I managed to dig about scanners in the USSR.
Maybe someone knows more?
Used documents, photos and videos
Sources of
Thanks for the important updates Ghost007 @ svitoglad, @ hoegni, @petuhov_k and @Rumlin
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