Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Soviet-Era Industrial Design

atlasobscura.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 134 posts

Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design

#101

Post by Aloha »

TheForumTroll wrote: post #80
v_lisivka wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All countries in the world was pre-industrial monarchies just 150 years ago. Please point to your point. Moreover, in WWW2, USSR lost about 1/6 of population. It's hard to name such losses as "win". Western Allies, which is also at war with Germany, provided continuous aid to that "superpower" in addition to their own soldiers at war.

>Western Allies, which is also at war with Germany, provided continuous aid to that "superpower" in addition to their own soldiers at war. On D-day the nazis were on the run, pushed back to Poland. The USSR did more than 90% of the winning and much of it before anyone else invaded. This thinking that the UK, US, etc. did anything near the winning that the USSR did is getting old. Of course we helped but it was a tiny…

The war could not have been won without american material, period.

That said, the russians did most of the dying to win the war.

The Russians contributed blood, the americans, material, and the british, spirit - or so the old saying goes.

Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design

#102

Post by digi_owl »

caf wrote: post #75
rdtsc wrote: post #37

Moscow Design Museum has some more examples too http://moscowdesignmuseum.ru/en/exhibitions/1/ . Those that grew up in Soviet Union will recognize familiar objects. I recognized the phones, the "basketball" game, and the portable checkers game. Well and of course the Moskvitch 408 car. I don't remember really thinking about design back then. Maybe because we didn't have many choices. You wanted a tape player you pick…

I think in that era electronic equipment often came with schematics in the West, too. I'm pretty sure our TRS-80 manuals had a schematic, and I remember opening up a few transistor radios to find the schematic screen-printed on the inside of the case.

The family (CRT) TV in the 80s came with a fold out schematic tucked in a pocket on the inside of the back cover.

And a CRT is not something to take lightly, as there is a sizable transformer in there to drive the electron gun and the magnets that deflect the beam.

What happened, imo, is the increasing used of ICs (first standardized ones, and later ASICs). This made it much harder to troubleshoot a device without access to an oscilloscope and the ability to order up OEM parts.

Before that a multimeter and some basic understanding of electric circuits could get you a long way.

Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design

#103

Post by Fins »

c-smile wrote: post #100
v_lisivka wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All countries in the world was pre-industrial monarchies just 150 years ago. Please point to your point. Moreover, in WWW2, USSR lost about 1/6 of population. It's hard to name such losses as "win". Western Allies, which is also at war with Germany, provided continuous aid to that "superpower" in addition to their own soldiers at war.

But far not all them had at their possession resources of half of rest world. Western Europe is all about that. How many colonial guldens are under each stone of town squares of its cities ... No surprise that technical revolution was originated there. Back to Russia... At WW1 it had no chances to confront rest of Europe. Like it was "shell hunger" in Russian army in 1916 - it's "industry" simply could not produce en…

By the time of the WWII it was just as bad; pretty much all of strategic supplies, explosives, fuel, etc. were coming from USA and UK.

USSR supplied most of the manpower, but without the American military-industrial complex, Germans would have rolled all the way to the Pacific with no problem.

Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design

#104

Post by Fins »

TheForumTroll wrote: post #83
mantas wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Catching up is kinda easy when you can just copy. USSR failed badly once it was time to go forward. Especially on electronics and computers. We shouldn't underestimate what focused dictatorships are capable of. They're bloody effective.

Would you mind answering why it took the US more than 20 years to catch somewhat up with Russian rocket engines even though they had access to information on how it was made if it is so easy? The best Russian rockets from the Soviet era wasn't beat by the US before SpaceX did so.

Soviet Moon program ended in a big nothing because by the time it was started all the German designers (who made all those great engines) had went home, and without them USSR never managed to catch up to anything like F-1. Native designs tended to blow up.

Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design

#105

Post by c-smile »

Fins wrote: post #103
c-smile wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But far not all them had at their possession resources of half of rest world. Western Europe is all about that. How many colonial guldens are under each stone of town squares of its cities ... No surprise that technical revolution was originated there. Back to Russia... At WW1 it had no chances to confront rest of Europe. Like it was "shell hunger" in Russian army in 1916 - it's "industry" simply could not produce en…

By the time of the WWII it was just as bad; pretty much all of strategic supplies, explosives, fuel, etc. were coming from USA and UK. USSR supplied most of the manpower, but without the American military-industrial complex, Germans would have rolled all the way to the Pacific with no problem.

"pretty much all of strategic supplies"

That's simply not true.

58,000 of T34/T34-85 was produced during WW2 time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_combat_vehicle_producti...

That's just medium tanks - workhorse of the war. Total production of armored vehicles in USSR at WW2 > 100,000.

While it got 19,510 tanks in total on Lend-Lease: https://ww2-weapons.com/lend-lease-tanks-and-aircrafts/

Only 4,000 of them were Shermans - the only Lend-Lease tanks that were comparable at least somehow. All others were nicknamed "wheeled coffins".

The same ratio is for aircrafts.

As of fuel then only some high-octane ones - for some aircrafts.

Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design

#106

Post by v_lisivka »

Fins wrote: post #103
c-smile wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But far not all them had at their possession resources of half of rest world. Western Europe is all about that. How many colonial guldens are under each stone of town squares of its cities ... No surprise that technical revolution was originated there. Back to Russia... At WW1 it had no chances to confront rest of Europe. Like it was "shell hunger" in Russian army in 1916 - it's "industry" simply could not produce en…

By the time of the WWII it was just as bad; pretty much all of strategic supplies, explosives, fuel, etc. were coming from USA and UK. USSR supplied most of the manpower, but without the American military-industrial complex, Germans would have rolled all the way to the Pacific with no problem.

At beginning of WWW2, USSR had pretty good position: thousands of tanks, millions of tons of ammunition, million army, powerful ally (Germany). USSR attacked Finland at winter to prevent invasion of France & Britain via Norway and Finland to attack Leningrad. It was risky move, lot of soldiers of Red Army died because of cold, but USSR won. At beginning 1941, USSR waited for beginning of Britain bombing of Baku, to start invasion to East (to attack British military bases) with help of Germany, and then to conquer Britain islands. Everything was perfect until 22 June 1941.

Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design

#107

Post by v_lisivka »

c-smile wrote: post #105
Fins wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the time of the WWII it was just as bad; pretty much all of strategic supplies, explosives, fuel, etc. were coming from USA and UK. USSR supplied most of the manpower, but without the American military-industrial complex, Germans would have rolled all the way to the Pacific with no problem.

"pretty much all of strategic supplies" That's simply not true. 58,000 of T34/T34-85 was produced during WW2 time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_combat_vehicle_producti... That's just medium tanks - workhorse of the war. Total production of armored vehicles in USSR at WW2 > 100,000. While it got 19,510 tanks in total on Lend-Lease: https://ww2-weapons.com/lend-lease-tanks-and-aircrafts/ Only 4,000 of them were…

USSR lost about 2000 tanks at Dubno operation (1941) in one(!) battle, because of problems with engines, fuel, and lack of communication. Germans had no tanks at all at that time (according to USSR classification, Germans had light armored vehicles, with anti-riffle armor only). Tank is good only if it operational and under command.

Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design

#108

Post by coldtea »

p2t2p wrote: post #33
pandaman wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/24/%D0%9B%D... You have no idea what are you talking about.

This is logo of the car - https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Файл:Lada_Logo.jpeg , this is a monument for the ship type in the city near by to the factory - https://goo.gl/images/Dod837 , this is a picture of the ship type from an artist - https://ru.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A4%D0%B0%D0%B9%D0%BB:Nic... and last but not least, the wikipedia article about ship type in russian - https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ладья_(судно)…

>This is logo of the car

It's not about the car. It's about a totally different product -- razor blades.

Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design

#109

Post by coldtea »

v_lisivka wrote: post #77
TheOtherHobbes wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When the Soviet Union was formed Russia was a pre-industrial feudal monarchy. It recapitulated roughly two hundred years of Western industrial development in less than fifty, mostly under the leadership of a murderous quasi-feudal dictator who purged all the brightest and most interesting people. And it still survived WWII to become a competitive space-faring superpower. I don’t particularly like Russia, but I think…

All countries in the world was pre-industrial monarchies just 150 years ago. Please point to your point. Moreover, in WWW2, USSR lost about 1/6 of population. It's hard to name such losses as "win". Western Allies, which is also at war with Germany, provided continuous aid to that "superpower" in addition to their own soldiers at war.

>All countries in the world was pre-industrial monarchies just 150 years ago

You'd be very surprised.

>in addition to their own soldiers at war.

All 20 of them?

Re: Soviet-Era Industrial Design

#110

Post by coldtea »

Fins wrote: post #103
c-smile wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But far not all them had at their possession resources of half of rest world. Western Europe is all about that. How many colonial guldens are under each stone of town squares of its cities ... No surprise that technical revolution was originated there. Back to Russia... At WW1 it had no chances to confront rest of Europe. Like it was "shell hunger" in Russian army in 1916 - it's "industry" simply could not produce en…

By the time of the WWII it was just as bad; pretty much all of strategic supplies, explosives, fuel, etc. were coming from USA and UK. USSR supplied most of the manpower, but without the American military-industrial complex, Germans would have rolled all the way to the Pacific with no problem.

>USSR supplied most of the manpower, but without the American military-industrial complex, Germans would have rolled all the way to the Pacific with no problem.

That's revisionist history -- and not the way things went down, or even how people that lived it knew them to be.

https://www.vox.com/2014/6/16/5814270/the-successful-70-year...

Or even how Hitler knew them to be:

https://www.feldgrau.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13647

Post reply on HN