A few years ago, I visited Bletchley Park, and I went to have a look at one of the bombes - the electro-mechanical devices that were used to decipher the German Enigma machine messages. An old lady in a wheelchair rolled up next to me and I struck up a conversation in which she started telling me about how she used to program it by setting up various configurations of patch cables. All of her fellow bombe operators were women from the Wrens (WRNS - Women's Royal Naval Service).
As the war progressed, the Germans developed new ciphers that were harder to decipher than those produced by the original Enigma machine. Colossus the first programmable, electronic, digital computer, was designed to crack them. The operating team for Collossus was made up of 272 Wrens (Women's Royal Navy Service) and only 27 men. In the USA, ENIAC, the first general purpose digital computer was developed to help develop artillery firing tables. The team of 6 who programmed ENIAC were all women.
Nowadays, if you look at the world's five largest tech companies, only 14% of the software engineers are women. Silicon Valley has developed a reputation for a "bro culture" in the tech industry, and many large tech companies have reputations as highly toxic environments for women.
Something seems to have gone wrong.
Even if we broaden our view beyond software engineers the percentage of women employed by tech companies seems to be around 20% in the USA and UK.
However, as I discovered more recently, things seem to be quite different in Armenia. Armenia's technology sector has been growing rapidly in recent years - by 33% in 2018. Reportedly, around 30% of the people working in this sector are women, and at many newer companies, this percentage is around 50% or more.
Armenia has a long history in computing, and a much larger role in the history of Soviet computing than many would imagine for such a small country. For example, somewhere between 30% and 40% of Soviet military computers were built in Armenia.
Andronik Iosifyan
This history seems to begin with Andronik Iosifyan. Born in 1905 in the Kalbajar district of Artsakh, he became director of the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Electromechanics (AUSRIE) in Moscow. Iosifyan specialised in designing electronics, and used his skills to design electrical systems for missiles, nuclear submarines, satellites and spacecraft, such as the first Soviet Meteor weather satellites. The electronics for the Soyuz spacecraft and Mir space station were developed under his leadership.
Victor Hambartsumyan, known as the founder of theoretical physics in the Soviet Union, was looking for designs for a computer that might be assembled at the Yerevan Scientific Research Institute of Mathematical Machines (YerSRIMM). He travelled to Moscow to meet Iosifyan, in the hope of securing such a design. Sergey Korolev, the lead designer of the first Soviet spaceships and satellites was also part of this meeting. Iosifyan knew Isaak Bruk, who had designed a minicomputer called the M-3 for scientific calculations, and arranged to build three at AUSRIE between 1957-1958. One of these stayed at AUSRIE, one went to Korolev and the other to Sergey Mergelyan at YerSRIMM.
YerSRIMM had been established in 1956, with the mathematician Mergelyan as its founding director. Receiving the M-3 computer in Yerevan enabled Mergelyan and his team to accelerate their work in computing and they designed a new computer called Aragats between 1958-60, based on the M-3.
The Hrazdan/Razdan family of computers were designed at YerSRIMM between 1958 and 1965. This was the first semiconductor computer in the Soviet Union. Manufactured from 1961, the Razdan-2 could perform 5000 operations per second, and the Razdan-3 released in 1966 could perform in the order of 30,000 operations per second. The Razdan computers were large - designed to occupy a 50 square metre room - and were mostly used for military purposes. A Razdan-3 can still be seen in the Computer Science Museum in Szeged, Hungary.
User guide for the Nairi minicomputer
Later, the Nairi minicomputer, was developed to be used to solve scientific, engineering and economic problems. This was a smaller machine, designed to be operated by a single person, and some were in use in Moscow railway stations. A number of iterations of Nairi were developed, with those in the 1980s being designed to be compatible with DEC PDP-11 computers.
Sadly, the breakup of the Soviet Union seems to have led to a lack of support and funding for research. In 1996, disappointed by the situation, Mergelyan left Armenia to join his son in Sacramento, California. Through the 90s, it seems that much was lost, but by the late 90s and early 2000s, efforts were being made to revive the industry.
Fortunately, in recent years, the technology industry in Armenia has been experiencing a very positive outlook. In 2015, the technology industry was responsible for 5% of GDP, and it was realised that this industry is relatively unaffected by Armenia’s geopolitical situation, being landlocked and with two of its borders closed to trade. New laws were introduced, making it much easier to found, operate, and grow a tech startup in Armenia. In 2014, it was reported that the IT sector was growing at a rate of 20% per year; in 2018, it grew by 33%. Technology incubators have been set up, funded by Silicon Valley venture capital funds with the express aim of supporting Armenian startup businesses, and there are already success stories. The Armenian technology industry seems to have a bright future ahead.
The Armenian Institute will be hosting an event on Thursday 18th March 2021, to explore the current situation with a panel of speakers who are all involved in this exciting growth industry in Armenia. Please join us to discover more about what is happening and what the future looks like for innovation in Armenia.
Written by Stephen Masters, AI trustee