Light pen: a device for drawing on Soviet computers (9 photos)

In 1969, a series of Soviet computers "MIR" (machine for engineering calculations) was replenished with a new version - "MIR-2". The whole series of these machines deserves a separate story for the contribution that they made to the development Soviet IT sphere, but MIR-2 was also unique in that this machine was completed with a keyboard, and a character display, and a "light pencil", as this device was called by the magazine "Technology of Youth" in 1970 year.





The developers themselves from the Kyiv Institute of Cybernetics preferred to call this manipulator a light pen. external device resembled a ballpoint pen connected to a computer with a wire, and the principle pen operation was similar: the operator either pointedly touched the display, or drew lines along it.










Most of the pictures show an IBM display, but the essence of its work is the same as with domestic screens

Of course, this development (in fact, the pen was invented back in the 50s and not at all in the USSR) was far from modern sensory screens, but for the early 70s it was very unusual and interesting solution. If earlier the operator was looking for errors among the information, printed on punched tape, now he saw everything he needed on the display and with using a light pen, he selected the necessary areas and corrected them.

Of course, when working with a pen, there were drawbacks - these are not very convenient (if you take a match and move it around the touch screen, you get about the same feeling), and the operator’s hands quickly enough tired when working with a vertically located plane.



But how many additional possibilities when working with a computer opened with a light pen. The mere fact that to a number of machines (SM series, if I'm not mistaken) as a test program for the pen was a simple but funny toy, capable of generating a real excitement among those who had access to computers.

The game was called "Landing on the Moon" and tested the accuracy and the correct operation of the light pen. The player controls the rocket engines and driving her. If he lost control, he crashed on the surface, if too cautious and did not calculate the fuel - the same fate.

But if the player managed to achieve a soft landing, then the hatch the ship was opened and the astronaut was heading to the pub, which was waiting for him nearby. Needless to say, quite respectable adults with real childish excitement endlessly "tested" the work of the pen?



Also among the lucky ones who have the opportunity to work on a computer, competitions for the most beautiful, hand-made drawn picture on the display. The pen, as it were, paints over, highlights pixels in the places it touches, creating the outlines of this or that another subject.

And the "crooks" often drew a picture through a plastic film from some magazine, then superimposed it on the display and circled pen - unlike the clumsy "masterpieces" of their colleagues, drawn from hands, such drawings looked very professional.



Illustration from the magazine "Technology of Youth", 1970

The scheme of this manipulator device was very simple: in some technical universities, students often made a light pen in as a term paper, because raw material costs were small, but the thing turned out to be useful and functional.

Well, in the second half of the 80s, when, like mushrooms after rain, the first personal computers began to appear, the Murom plant radio measuring instruments produced PC "Krista", equipped with light pen.






Of course, a little later, these manipulators were completely displaced by the mouse, but their own in the history of Soviet computer technology, they still managed to leave.

Has anyone had to work with a light pen? Share your impressions, how was it?