With the onset of the new year, users of social networks have unearthed an old filmstrip (a kind of slideshow with captions) "In 2017" in their stash. Its authors in an intelligible form tried to tell Soviet kids what the world will be like 57 years later on the anniversary of the Great October Revolution: robots, video communication, space travel, atomic trains.
I was interested in the history of the use and application of the scanner in the USSR.
Terms and technical brief details:
→ Image scanner
→ Information input / output devices.
→ How the scanner works and works.
The progenitor of scanners → Phototelegraph
→ Scan technology
Stills from the 1957 animated film:
But it was only in 1953 that V. M. Fridkin, who had just graduated from Moscow University, created the first Soviet copy machine and subsequently developed the theory of xerography. The future, as we know, came much earlier than 2017, as for scanners - for sure.
In the Soviet Union, copying and duplicating machines (hectographs) were considered strategic, they were obligatory registered with the KGB, and the strictest records were kept of who copied what and where.
- sung in the famous song of Alexander Galich (a hint, as you understand, for samizdat …)
For the unauthorized use of copying and scanning technologies in the USSR, one could "sit down" for 10 years.
"A HUNDRED YEARS BANNED, OR THE WILD OF A HECTOGRAPH"
The beginning of the spread of computer technology in the USSR opened up a new field for innovative developments. In the late 1980s, a group of young engineers from the Institute of Automation and Electrometry of the SB RAS initiated the creation of a projection scanner.
Reference: Historical milestones of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
Having achieved some success, colleagues organized a cooperative and started creating and promoting their development. The result of their work was the Uniscan projection scanner, which combined the capabilities of a scanner and a modern digital camera. It had a resolution of 72 megapixels. This resolution made it possible to see individual eyelashes in a human image in A0 format.
An image of 72 megapixels in the late 80s turned out like this
The first scanners produced black and white or grayscale images. "Open the world in all its amazing dullness!" - joked in advertising brochures. These models also did not differ in refined design. Later, light filters were added to the design, and from that moment the scanner made it possible to obtain full-color images.
The Uniscan scanner was used for image acquisition and processing 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 stationary objects. The combination of a scanner with a microscope has proven to be very much in demand in forensic science - the Uniscan scanner has proven to be the best that has been offered in the world for these tasks.
As far as I understood this issue - this initiative group of young engineers in 1995 (already in the Russian Federation) founded LLC "Uniscan" in Novosibirsk.
LLC "Uniscan" is still working quite and fruitfully.
Scanners for entering slides made it possible to efficiently enter information from transparent media. Usually these are either flatbed scanners with a special slide module, or drum scanners. Their main applications are publishing and cartography. By the way, until recently, a teletypewriter using the principle of a drum scanner was used to transfer page layouts of central publications throughout the territory of the former USSR.
Of course, we were not the first in this area:
But they are not outsiders either.
Soon "hand-held" scanners appeared in the USSR:
Of the domestic encoders with freely movable sighting devices, PKGIO is known - "Semiautomatic device for encoding graphic information Optical" (the optical part is, apparently, a sighting device in the form of a magnifying glass with a crosshair and a 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) push-button keyboard and a keyboard in the form of a table with holes that you need to poke with an electric pencil - it is mounted in 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 - spy (or reconnaissance) equipment.
Note:
The most famous (or rather "famous") special means are photocopiers "Cinnamon", "Winter" and "Tan"
The effectiveness of using rolling machines, as well as the need for quick and high-quality copying of a large number of documents, prompted the developers of NIL-11 (a specialized laboratory that was part of the Operational and Technical Directorate (OTU) of the KGB of the USSR) to create a portable rolling photocopier for A4 documents. In a new camera called "Cinnamon", the document was covered with a pressure glass on the working side of the device (with dimensions like the A4 format), and the mirror-prism mechanism moving inside the device scanned the document evenly under the action of a spring.
For uniform illumination of the document in "Cinnamon", a special thin and long illuminator, like fluorescent lamps, was provided, which moved along with the mirror-prism mechanism. Its movement, as well as the transportation of the photographic film, was provided by a spring, cocked by the side lever for shooting one frame. The "Cinnamon" cassette held up to 400 frames of standard 35 mm film and could be quickly replaced with a "fresh" one in the light in a few seconds, which made it possible to copy a large number of documents. The lens aperture was selected depending on the sensitivity of the film. "Cinnamon" had a frame counter, as well as a convenient shutter release lever that worked from both the right and left hands. A standard 110/220 volt electrical network could be used to power the Cinnamon illuminator, as well as a 12 volt voltage through the car's cigarette lighter socket.
"Cinnamon" turned out to be a very effective device for quickly copying a large number of documents, for example, when an officer-curator received secret documents from his agent through a cache for a fairly short time, copied them in a car, observing the requirements of secrecy, and after completing the work returned them back to the agent in a predetermined way. "Cinnamon" was also actively used in safe apartments and in hotel rooms, where documents received for a time were delivered and, after photocopying, were returned to places of official storage. The dimensions and weight of the "Cinnamon" together with the power supply unit and the cassettes pre-loaded with photographic film made it possible to carry the entire set in a regular briefcase or in an attaché case, which ensured the secrecy of the entire event of working with the device both in a car parked or on the move, and for filming documents in room.
The operational units of the KGB actively used the "Cinnamon", noting the simple setup and convenient control of the device, in connection with which the serial production of the "Cinnamon" was organized at the Krasnogorsk plant, where the device was assigned the factory index C-125.
Later, the operational units of the KGB received a prototype of the "Cinnamon", designed to use 16 mm photographic film with an electric motor to drive the mirror-prism system and the film transport mechanism. The new Zima device was smaller in size and provided copying of an A4 document in two times with each half of the sheet overlapping. The "Zima" cassette was designed for 400 frames, held 6 meters of 16 mm double-perforated film with a sensitivity of 45 to 700 units. GOST. Photographing of one frame began after shifting the switch lever to the right with the thumb of the right hand, and was carried out for 2.5 seconds. The power supply units included in the "Winter" set ensured the operation of the device from a 12 volt automobile network and from a standard 110/220 volt electrical network.
Despite its smaller dimensions and the presence of an electric drive, the Zima apparatus has not been actively used in operational practice. According to KGB officers, the apparatus often lay for years in the storage areas of operational equipment and was removed only for annual inventory. According to experts, copying an A4 document twice turned out to be inconvenient, and many operatives preferred the old "Cinnamon".
In the mid-1980s. a prototype of "Cinnamon" and "Winter" appears, a camera "Zagar", for copying a full A4 sheet on 16 mm film with an electric drive of mirror-prism mechanisms for scanning and transporting the film.
The Zagara cassette was designed for 400 shots, the set also included two more cassettes. Thus, "Zagar" could provide a relatively fast copying of more than a thousand sheets of documents.
However, the new "Zagar" was not actively used, possibly due to 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 transporting "Zagar", which was already difficult to fit into standard portfolio. In the second half of the 1980s. the active use of computer scanners began, on which copying in comparison with the bulky "Zagar" was much easier. All this led to the fact that the factory batch of "Zagarov" never found application. New sets of this apparatus were stored for a long time in warehouses of operational equipment, until an order was received to send the entire batch to NIL-11 for the destruction or possible use of individual blocks, assemblies and parts.
This is how the century of very effective use of rolling cameras by the KGB divisions ended, which gave a lot of necessary and especially important documents for the USSR, including copies of materials in rare languages, when the requirements for high definition of the resulting negatives were especially imposed. Today, in the arsenal of modern intelligence services there are various household digital devices that allow, without any camouflage, to scan documents and drawings of any complexity quite openly and easily.
By the way, the TV cameras of the Luna-9 and Luna-13 spacecraft, the side cameras of the Lunokhod rovers, and the Venus cameras can be referred to as scanners. And the real scanner can be considered the Luna-19 and -22. The camera was a linear photosensitive element that scanned the image of the lunar surface moving under the apparatus. Snapshot:
Today, without scanners, we can no longer imagine our normal life:
)
That's all that I managed to dig up about scanners in the USSR.
Maybe someone knows more?
Used documents, photos and videos
Sources of
Thanks for the important clarifications Ghost007 @ svitoglad, @hoegni, @petuhov_k and @Rumlin
