Soviet nuclear control devices
Mark Pitcher's posted a set of Soviet nuclear controls that look exactly as I pictured high-tech equipment looking when I was a kid (shown here is a nuclear detonator panel (!) that bristles with high-tech menace): "Equipment built during the 1940's to 1970's for use in the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Test Site (the 'Polygon'). All are hand-made and most are one-offs. Photos from a museum in Kurchatov Kazakhstan."
Kurchatov Nuke Equipment (via Make)
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It has a (nearly) full size door.
With a handle.
Amazing.
Given that it was tube-based (reasonable assumption), and thus needed to be opened up and reached into fairly often, putting a door on it makes perfect sense -- if you've got the space, use it to improve serviceability.
I'm more impressed by the fact that it has its own platform (wooden raised-floor?), and that the operator was given a footrest and a wooden "desk" surface (good ergonomics) but couldn't move the chair (bad ergonomics). One can hope that's just for museum-exhibit purposes.
I wish we had a better explanation of what all the displays and controls do...
... Yeah, I agree: that's an attractive hunk of console, as consoles go. Businesslike, authoritative, mysterious, pleasing symmetries... Dr. Frankenstein would approve.
Thank you for finding my next computer desk.
I wanna see the INSIDES!
If this was a one-off, the way it was made will say tons about who made it. It's interesting.
-like industrial archeology!
Does anyone else see an iPhone prototype on the left?
That is a work of art.
I think Khan used one of these to set off the genesis device.
i (don't) like to think of a scenario whereby some aging lone operator working alone and forgotten has to continually reset the date every few hours to prevent the non Y2K compliant console launching a nuclear warhead.
/yes i know, Lost did that and this thing would be too primitive for Y2K problems :)
Look here comrade, this dial goes to 11.
It needs to be repurposed as the interface for my media files. Immediately.
how old is cory?
I like that the chair is positioned *just* far enough away to make working at this thing a living hell.
beautiful! Hope they ran a Geiger over it.
Yes the chair looks to be too far back, and has no backrest. But I guess if you were setting off a nuke you'd have a tendency to sit on the edge of your seat anyway.
It's an Interrossiter for sure. Look at it with 3d glasses and the logo pops out.
Is new super compact version!
Just begging to be a casemod.
The wooden desk surface makes my day.
In my teens I read a book about a Russian pilot (Belenko?) who had defected in a Mig 25. The book describes how the first American engineers to study the plane were astonished by a) the use of vacuum tubes in the avionics, and b) the control panel, which was set in finely carved wood.
I'll have to dig that book up, it was a great read.
I'm sure I could use this to Reverse the polarity of the Neutron flow.
@18 http://www.testpilot.ru/russia/mikoyan/mig/25/images/mig25p_cockpit.jpg MIG25 Cockpit - where do you see wood? you had read too much fiction :)