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I constructed an amplifier with a loud-speaker, connected to a monostabil multivi-
brator in the instruction control unit, which - during the computer operation - was
oscillated in the voice dominion: between 50 Hz-10kHz. From the beginning of 1959,
our computer became an „electronic music instrument”, too. A colleague of mine
wrote a program, “Beethoven: Für Elise” playing by the M-3 computer.
In the first version of M-3 we used Russian commercial tubes and cuprox diodes,
later we decided to replace the Soviet tubes with new long life tubes produced in
Hungary. I constructed a totally new control unit for four magnetic drums, I used
these new Hungarian Tungsram long-life tubes. I decided to replace the kuprox diodes
with Tungsram produced Ge diodes, unfortunately this development was not
successful.
We received from the Soviet Union the necessary logical, electronical etc. plans,
but we did not get any working documentation of the computer. Balint Dömölki
started to study the logical and electronical technical documentation on his own and
he understood - step by step - the working method of the computer. He elaborated a
new “graphical concept documentation”, it was together: a logical and a graphical
description, including the circuits of the computer.
At the end we could construct the computer, but we understood the functions of the
different parts of the computer from the documentation prepared by Dömölki, not
from the original one.
The moment, when the computer - constructed by us - started to work, were very
remarkable for us. We all were in the institute - night a day - more-less a week long,
we did not go home, we were feeling, (we were sure) the start was very close. Our
mathematicians had prepared several programs, they were waiting, too, for the first
program to run. Then it happened, but we did not want to believe: our computer was
working.
The speed of the first version of our computer was about 30-50 operation per sec-
ond, our M-3 was in this time the fastest equipment for computing in our country, but
it was the largest electronic machine, too. We did not believe that our first program
ran successfully, because it was “unbelievably fast”!
Seeing our result, Mr Varga decided to hand the computer officially over to the
representatives of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, but several mathematician
members of the Academy did not knew what a computer was.
Varga had an excellent idea: to hand over the computer to one of the best Soviet
computer engineers, who designed the M-3 computer. He was
Mr. G. P. Lopato
,
chief constructor of the Soviet M-3.
The acceptance test of M-3 was conducted and successfully concluded on January
21, 1959, which was enough to the Presidium of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
The committee - heading by Mr. Lopato -
declared the M-3 computer ready
and not
only the institutes of the Academy but universities, different developers, factories etc.
could use it.
After the successful acceptance test, our mathematicians and economists solved
several - previously prepared - problems on the new computer not only from scien-
tific domains, but also on the technical and economic life. A number of experts:
engineers, economists, mathematicians, linguists and many others started to study
computer programming using the machine to solve their own problems.
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