
The Vintage Beauty of Soviet Control Rooms (2018) - ricardomcgowan
https://designyoutrust.com/2018/01/vintage-beauty-soviet-control-rooms/
======
earthscienceman
I recently had the luck of spending several weeks/months on a Russian
icebreaker from the soviet era. It was incredible. The engine control room was
a work of art. Room after room of thoughtfully constructed controls with a
huge emphasis on design. The bridge was also stunning. As someone who grew up
post-cold-war in the United States, it was really something to be immersed in
the aesthetic and culture of Russia in that era. I'll dig up some photos and
post them here in a bit maybe.

EDIT:

Alright, here they are. I'm currently working on building a static website for
my photography/work... but it's not done. So I'm sharing a small selection
quickly in the stupidest way possible (google photos).

[https://photos.app.goo.gl/CL6Rc4TE7ddZd4Xo7](https://photos.app.goo.gl/CL6Rc4TE7ddZd4Xo7)

~~~
semisober
I had the luck of visiting post-soviet countries in Eastern Europe, and I can
say I was somewhat admired by the block buildings that they have. Rows and
rows of massive constructions that look alike, we even visited some
apartments, and they had the same room placement, some had really old
chandeliers, which gave a strange sense of luxury in a room that's really
plain and simple. I think we visited the district where Chernobyl was filmed,
but right now I can't remember the exact country.

~~~
reaperducer
_block buildings that they have. Rows and rows of massive constructions that
look alike_

I've seen a lot of that in South Korea, and the Czech Republic, too. I wonder
what other countries have this.

~~~
philippoi
Pretty much every country has it. Khrushchev implemented their mass deployment
in the Soviet Union to stem a housing crisis (I think maybe even as one of his
earliest actions as chairman...it's been a while since I read about it in an
architecture magazine). Once you recognize the form, you see it everywhere,
even outside the Soviet bloc; in the US, Canada, etc. The political influence
makes their prominence within the urban fabric rise or fall, but the idea
behind the building form is pretty much the same: cheap housing for an
increasingly urban population without regard to street life, scale, etc., very
much in the vein of Corbusier's Cité radieuse. I suspect the economic argument
of that kind of construction was hard to argue with at the time.

~~~
p_l
Corbusier's ideas were often part of the inspiration, only to get heavily
pared down due to cost cutting.

For example, a lot of standardized blocks in USSR were originally planned to
be made from large "library of designs" to provide varied and well adapted
neighbourhoods, however after first few went through the cost cutting measures
meant that they were replicated en masse.

Another example is one I have lived in - the longest building in Poland, at
over 1.5km length, nicknamed Beijing by many due to super-high density.
Critical changes into how the building was built were made by building company
on occasion when architects were not around, resulting in long-term damage to
comfort and quality of living. Once the architects were back in, it was too
late to fix as you'd have to rip out the foundations and start anew.

Several other more "Avant garde" neighbourhoods in Poland suffered from
similar issues, often caused by policy that was supposed to encourage
innovation, where "rationalisation proposals" (not a good translation but
close) that, for example, would lower the cost, were rewarded and often not
well checked (if at all). The initial cost savings then turned into heavy
issue later on.

A lot could be also said with regards to non-design problems during building,
which caused issues due to materiel deteriorating sitting outside waiting for
shipment of components necessary to build the required predecessors to the use
of the now-rotting ones.

------
_n_b_
The ones I can see that are clearly nuclear power plant control rooms really
don't look all that different than the Western designs of the same era. They
don't even look that different now in those plants, except for more computer
screens (at the operator desks mostly, not necessarily many "on the boards")
and digital strip chart recorders.

The biggest difference I see is that the Soviet stuff clearly wasn't
seismically qualified.

~~~
mgibbs63
I agree - many older particle accelerators in the U.S. have/had control rooms
that look very similar to these photos (go see the 88-inch cyclotron at
Lawrence Berkeley National Lab if you ever get a chance!). I think this is
more 'vintage control system aesthetic' than a particularly soviet look.

~~~
vilhelm_s
In fact one of the photos in this collection is from the American ship NS
Savannah (launched in 1959)... it's not easy to spot which one is the odd one
out!

~~~
rootbear
I’ve toured the Savannah. It’s docked at Baltimore, MD, and they do tours one
a year (but not this year). And yeah, the control rooms are very retro.

------
supernova87a
I think this is a world totally foreign to what HN's world is about, which is
why it's so charming/aesthetically pleasing. (exaggerating a bit, but not that
much)

The reason that these switches and dials are ok to be hardcoded in metal and
glass is that they (and the people) do the same thing, over and over, year
after year, for decades at a time. Rinse and repeat.

Versus the software world (or more accurately, the world of starting up new
things and experiments within months) -- where you don't know what you're
building yet, whether it will work, and if it will still exist next year.

~~~
frosted-flakes
Yeah, but my car has air conditioning, and it's not going away. It needs a
button to turn it on and off. It gets pressed several times a day for 20 years
(except winter). Why does that button ever need to change?

~~~
WalterBright
Yet change it does. In my old car, the A/C is a button labeled "A/C". In new
cars, I can't figure out how to turn it on.

It's similar to each iteration of Windows. I'm convinced that Microsoft takes
1000 darts, labels each with a command like "backup", and has a blind monkey
throw it at a dartboard to determine where it goes.

At least Microsoft labels them with words, like "Control Panel", even though
what's in it is completely random from one iteration to the next. The car
companies label all the buttons with random splotches inspired by
fingerpainting toddlers.

~~~
supernova87a
cf. BMW's dumb iDrive system

edit: and now that I think about it, I'm suddenly interested in understanding
why consumer products seem averse to providing detailed/specific buttons
compared to professional products? Is it to try to not overwhelm the casual /
amateur user? (or conversely to be able to reach that user)

For example, professional video cameras that have physical buttons and dials
for every function, versus consumer cameras that hide that 3 layers deep in a
virtual menu.

Or, the cockpit of a jet (and all its displays and controls) versus a
passenger car. Or how about a long-distance truck console -- is it similar?

Maybe it's the issue of casual / lowest common demoninator users not being
overwhelmed by such detail. Or that if you cannot filter your users to the
ones who can or want to handle the detail, you have to design to the lowest
bar.

Which is a shame for those who want / like the detail.

~~~
milesvp
I suspect a lot of it has to do with cost. Iterating hardware is expensive. On
top of that tactile buttons are more expensive than you'd think, and Bill Of
Materials can trump a lot of other decisions in hardware.

Some of it is also perception. The first cars that were likely to have in
touch displays were luxury cars, and there you could show how advanced the car
was by showing that there were no buttons anywhere. That said, I'm starting to
see a move back towards buttons in high end cars again. Here's hoping that
that filters down to lower end cars. Much as I prefer buying used cars, I'd
still like to be able to buy a car newer than 2012 some day.

------
dvirsky
I've had this idea for a long time but haven't gotten to actually doing it, to
create a physical dashboard for production services using that aesthetic.
Controlled by some Raspberry Pi or something, exposing an API, so I can hook
it to real dashboard data for my work.

With the API you bridge it to something like Grafana etc, to make the gauges
and lights go, and for bonus points have some buttons do things like silence
alerts, a big red button to roll back a deployment, and a missile-launch like
button with a key you need to turn to deploy to production.

The closest thing I've found on eBay that could be used as a base and was
somewhat similar in design, was the control panel of a Soviet tank. But I
think it will just have to be made from scratch using bought gauges and
buttons.

~~~
FiatLuxDave
_a big red button_

Back in the day when we were building our fusion reactor at Fiat Lux, we saved
some money by buying an old Varian ion implanter (for the HV power supplies).
We scrapped whatever good parts we could find off it. One of the goodies we
got out of that thing was an absolutely huge (~5 inch diameter) red button
with the word STOP on it.

I always wanted to find a good use for that button, because it was just so
amazing! But the thing about a fusion reactor, is that turning it off is
pretty easy. The only thing that it might have been useful for was as an
emergency stop button for the high voltage power supplies. And the only time
that would have been useful, we didn't think to hook up the button beforehand.

I like your idea. The aesthetics of web-based design seem rather confined to
the screen, and bringing that control of information out of the screen sounds
like a cool idea.

~~~
jacquesm
That button would serve handily as a meeting terminator.

------
detaro
Seems taken from
[http://blog.presentandcorrect.com/27986-2](http://blog.presentandcorrect.com/27986-2),
which did link to the sources for the images.

------
markvdb
Watch Solaris [0] by Andrei Tarkovsky! It's an amazing Soviet era sci-fi
movie. While the controls in there are obviously fake, it's interesting to
look at how the director and his team imagined a space station to look in
1972.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_%281972_film%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solaris_%281972_film%29)

~~~
pengaru
There's also significant Russian space ship interiors shown in the 2001: A
Space Odyssey sequel; 2010: The Year We Make Contact.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010:_The_Year_We_Make_Contact](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010:_The_Year_We_Make_Contact)

~~~
twoheadedboy
Also interesting to note that Tarkovsky hated 2001: A Space Odyssey.

------
Biggleman
Reading the comments it seems many people are in awe of the physical/analog
meters and switches. Most the vessels sailing the oceans worldwide have
similar looking controlrooms at the present time.

As a former maritime engineer (advanced plumber at sea) I also would like to
add that these physical/analog systems are in fact much more reliable and
problems are easier to isolate. Please also keep in mind that at the locations
where these controlrooms are implemented, the operators usually have more
experience with mechanical stuff than PLC I/O's (those are done by contractors
more often than not)

~~~
projektfu
The digital dials also don’t give us the drama in the movies of tapping and
unsticking the indicator to reveal the crisis situation. Although I wonder how
common that cliché is in real life.

~~~
nullc
My experience is that displays that silently stop updating is a more common
property of digital readouts. :-/

~~~
LargoLasskhyfv
Indeed. Had a little surgery under general anesthesia a while ago. Shortly
before that time Hewlett-Packard ran adverts in the mainstream press about
Windows on Itanium, with _that_ hospital as flagship case.

Was my 2nd general anesthesia only, so i've been a little nervous because i
don't like to be 'switched off'.

Anyways, been in the preparation room on that rolling stretcher thing, got
some IVs and electrodes while looking around.

All very modern, many, many flat panel displays mounted on swivel arms from
down the ceiling, showing and beeping my vital signs. Interesting for
biofeedback, i thought.

Got the mask on, got asked how i feel: _' pleasantly light'_.

Then all the beeping died, and all the screens froze. No reset, bluescreen,
static or other unusual stuff. Just frozen.

Heard a loud _' SHIT!'_ from behind, and the clacking of running shoes on the
tiles. Clacking shoes came back in an instant and rewired me to some shoebox-
thing covered in orange rubber with some mini-displays, knobs and sliders.

 _' How do you feel now?'_ i've been asked... Lifting the mask i only growled:
_' very confidence inspiring...'_

 _' Sleep deep sweety!'_ was the last thing i heard.

Afterwards i had a surreal night at the 20ieth floor or so, with hot and cold
shivers running up and down my spine and the harbour in my view.

Anyways, next morning i asked the surgeon if i hallucinated that, and she
answered: No, you didn't. But it was a first!

I LOLd _hard_.

edit: It _had_ to happen this way/to me, because all my life i've been an
open-source fanboi.

Incompatible 'fates', so to speak :-)

------
osamagirl69
I always loved the look of older switchgear (as in power transmission, not
network switches...). There are few examples given here, but some of the early
gear genuinely wouldn't look out of place in a Frakenstein movie, like the
original control room in at Battersea[1].

There is just something about a room covered in mechanical meters (not analog
meters hooked up to a computer - literally mechanical computers hooked up with
sense transformers to the high voltage lines) that read thousands of amps and
10s if not 100s of thousands of volts, often times with the megawatts of power
traveling just on the other side of the panel!

[1] [http://benedante.blogspot.com/2015/05/battersea-power-
statio...](http://benedante.blogspot.com/2015/05/battersea-power-station.html)

~~~
asteli
Why no love for network switches? The old mechanical telephone exchange
equipment is enormously satisfying to watch as well.

[https://youtu.be/_xI9tXi-UNs](https://youtu.be/_xI9tXi-UNs)

~~~
PoachedSausage
You can see them in action at Avoncroft Museum of Historic Buildings[0] which
includes a working telephone exchange.

About a mile from there is Droitwich Transmitting Station, an ArtDeco era
station, see page 13 of [1] for exposed knife switches with 400V.

[0] [https://avoncroft.org.uk/avoncrofts-work/special-
collections...](https://avoncroft.org.uk/avoncrofts-work/special-collections/)

[1]
[http://www.bbceng.info/Operations/transmitter_ops/Reminiscen...](http://www.bbceng.info/Operations/transmitter_ops/Reminiscences/Droitwich/droitwich_calling2.pdf)

~~~
barrkel
There's a functional mechanical switching relay, the kind triggered off of the
clicks of a rotary dialing wheel, attached to two phones at the communication
museum in Frankfurt [https://www.mfk-frankfurt.de/](https://www.mfk-
frankfurt.de/) and you can dial one phone from the other, and see the relays
move as you enter the numbers.

------
microcolonel
I'm really not fond of much of this sort of design. So many objects from the
60s and 70s were too focused on looking “cool”. The furniture strikes me as
impractical and inhumane, and most of it was poor quality; I've seen a lot of
it thrown out, and it just gets ratty and the laminates peel off if the
climate control wasn't just right in whatever building it was in.

The organization of controls is alright, and the SCADA-style visual HMI
definitely looks intriguing, but I wouldn't say it's “beautiful” in any way I
would recognize; and it's not really any different from the design language of
similar-period U.S. control rooms (see examples below).

You'll even note in my third example _one of the images in the article isn 't
even of a soviet control room_ but rather a U.S. nuclear ship control room.

This error seems to stem from this article being from a family of slapdash
articles based on a webpage with a collection of control room photos [0]
claimed to be Soviet; though they they note several corrections, the U.S. ship
control room is still there, right at the top, taunting you.

[https://www.atomicheritage.org/sites/default/files/Three%20M...](https://www.atomicheritage.org/sites/default/files/Three%20Mile%20Island%20Control%20Room.jpg)

[https://hips.hearstapps.com/pop.h-cdn.co/assets/15/28/3200x2...](https://hips.hearstapps.com/pop.h-cdn.co/assets/15/28/3200x2133/gallery-1436388894-monticello-
training-simulator.jpg)

[https://hips.hearstapps.com/pop.h-cdn.co/assets/15/28/3200x2...](https://hips.hearstapps.com/pop.h-cdn.co/assets/15/28/3200x2133/gallery-1436388667-ns-
savannah-control-room-md1.jpg)

[0]:
[http://blog.presentandcorrect.com/27986-2](http://blog.presentandcorrect.com/27986-2)

------
gamegoblin
See also a dubiously useful but very aesthetic "control room for the economy"
in early 70's Chile:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn)

~~~
ceejayoz
> After the CIA-backed military coup on September 11, 1973, Cybersyn was
> abandoned and the operations room was destroyed.

I do wish we'd had a chance to see how well it worked.

~~~
gnarbarian
Spoiler alert: centrally planned economies never work.

~~~
p_l
Spoiler alert - most corporations are centrally planned.

In fact, the system design behind Cybersyn is closer to decentralized systems
like Toyota Production System rather than centralized approaches exemplified
in typical American corporations.

The whole point of cybersyn was that control loops were supposed t be
established at multiple levels from bottom up, with higher levels interacting
only when required for example to handle cooperation between multiple
entities.

------
_jal
A lot of them have an interesting visual grammar - some of them almost look
like subway maps.

For some reason I love trying to work out the communicative intent behind the
design of some of these things when I don't know what the system actually does
- there's clearly a lot of thought behind the presentation that turns it into
an interesting puzzle.

...And then I compare some of that to modern industrial design. Everything
must be a touch screen, who cares if the UI makes any sense or the operating
context makes demanding both visual and manual attention distracting or
dangerous?

~~~
vilhelm_s
Indeed, one of them _is_ a subway control panel, and another one a railway
panel. :) [See
[http://blog.presentandcorrect.com/27986-2](http://blog.presentandcorrect.com/27986-2)
for the links to original image sources.]

------
duxup
Very pretty, but not sure they were anything that 60s and 70s style were ...
elsewhere in many cases.

That's not a knock on them.

Usability though I hear was pretty rough in some cases... but again for the
same reasons UI can suck any other place too.

Old soviet era posters looked great too, even if sort of static as you look at
them over time and they don't evolve much.

------
obiefernandez
These are great for my collection of realistic yet not-realistic Zoom meeting
virtual background!

------
c-smile
USSR's Strategic Rocket Forces Control Rooms were also quite spectacular. It's
a pity I do not have photos of them (for obvious reasons).

This [https://habr.com/ru/post/446098/](https://habr.com/ru/post/446098/) is
close but not quite. The satellite state map (ru: Карта спутниковой
обстановки) and rooms themselves were less fancy but more brutally-functional
I would say.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Presumably USA (GB, DE, ???) have pictures!

------
bsaul
Having recently worked on creating monitoring dashboard for some backend,
there are a few things that strikes me :

\- The indicators are physically disposed in a way to represent the physical
location of what they are monitoring. It helps understand what it is measuring
(instead of just adding a label.. or putting all the "tension" indicator in
the same row, for example).

\- Next to the indicators are the buttons to physically interact with that
part of the system. This is very logical : you see the red light, and right
below it you have the button to shut the thing off.

I don't know of any infrastructure monitoring dashboard system that works this
way. I wonder how that would translate in our world of virtual instances. But
i'm pretty sure there's something to take inspiration from here.

------
blattimwind
These don't look much different from control rooms elsewhere from the same
time? Heck, a lot of process control rooms still look a lot like this (and for
good reason), just with a row or two of desks with screens in front and
perhaps some screens sprinkled in here and there.

~~~
dylan604
Hopefully, we won't start seeing these types of pictures with touchscreens in
the consoles.

~~~
duskwuff
I've got some bad news for you:

[https://features.propublica.org/navy-uss-mccain-
crash/navy-i...](https://features.propublica.org/navy-uss-mccain-crash/navy-
installed-touch-screen-steering-ten-sailors-paid-with-their-lives/)

------
benburleson
This one isn't even vintage, look at the flat monitor!

[https://main-designyoutrust.netdna-ssl.com/wp-
content/upload...](https://main-designyoutrust.netdna-ssl.com/wp-
content/uploads/2018/01/9-14.jpg?iv=146)

~~~
Dahoon
Did the flat screen travel back in time?

------
vmh1928
These look like pre-computer analog control rooms at large plants everywhere.
There wasn't much automation then so the operators really had to know the
process and how to manually start, stop and modify the behavior of whatever it
was - chemicals, power, steel, etc..

------
mikepurvis
It's super cool to see the natural light (even skylights!) present in some of
the rooms pictured. That would be unthinkable when glare from monitors is an
issue, but makes total sense when everything is mechanical.

------
pippy
My dad worked in a substation in the 90's which had the aesthetic of many of
these pictures. Wall to wall switches which controlled the power distribution
to half of New Zealand. Halfway through the 90's they upgraded to a few boring
beige boxes in an office, and there was no need to use the manual switches. I
loved going there because his workmates would give me pirated MS-DOS games on
floppy disks, but the magic was lost. Later on they restructured all control
through a single office in the capital and my dad lost his job.

------
VBprogrammer
This is a bit of a random question but if anyone will know this answer I'm
sure it's the HN hive mind.

I was looking for those handle shaped switches, the tall ones you can wrap
your whole fist around and activate. I've no idea if they have a specific name
but I've not been able to find them in industrial parts catalogues but they
are common in power station control rooms world wide by the looks of things.
The third photo down has a lot of examples.

Anyone have any idea if there is a specific name for those which I'm missing?

~~~
intrepidhero
Examples [https://www.electroswitch.com/products/utility-power-
switche...](https://www.electroswitch.com/products/utility-power-switches-
relays/manual-standard-instrument-and-control-switches/series-24)

[https://www.electroswitch.com/products/utility-power-
switche...](https://www.electroswitch.com/products/utility-power-switches-
relays/manual-standard-instrument-and-control-switches/type-w)

~~~
watsocd
I think that was the GE model. Here is the Westinghouse version.
[https://nationalswitchgear.com/Products/WH-
TYPE-W2-CIRCUIT-B...](https://nationalswitchgear.com/Products/WH-
TYPE-W2-CIRCUIT-BREAKER-CONTROL-SWITCH-3-STAGE__013-385.aspx)

------
martopix
I've been to a 1950s decomissioned nuclear research reactor in Italy. It's
still being monitored even if it's been turned off for years; with the
addition of a few computers in a corner, the control room still looks pretty
much like that. Printers instead of monitors, small bulbs instead of LEDs. At
some point I stepped too closed to one of the desks, and an actual HORN went
off.

------
ur-whale
From the good old days when complex systems were still mostly 'fits in head'
and could be drawn on a wall ... beautiful.

------
DubiousPusher
If you are ever in Berlin absolutely pay to go up the Soviet radio tower. The
one that looks a bit like the Space Needle. The room you enter before you
board the elevator is stunningly beautiful.

In fact, generally it's a far more beautiful structure than most such towers.
The interior design is especially impressive.

------
GeekyBear
I've always been fond of the Battersea electric power station in England.

>The station's design proved popular straightaway, and was described as a
"temple of power", which ranked equal with St Paul's Cathedral as a London
landmark. In a 1939 survey by The Architectural Review a panel of celebrities
ranked it as their second favourite modern building.

The A Station's control room was given many Art Deco fittings by architect
Halliday. Italian marble was used in the turbine hall, and polished parquet
floors and wrought-iron staircases were used throughout.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battersea_Power_Station](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battersea_Power_Station)

It's amazing that they went so far out of their way to make an industrial
plant beautiful, inside and out.

~~~
Foivos
This one looks very similar to the C&C red alert power plant [1]. I wonder if
this not a coincidence.

[1]
[https://cnc.fandom.com/wiki/Power_plant_(Red_Alert_1)](https://cnc.fandom.com/wiki/Power_plant_\(Red_Alert_1\))

------
aivisol
The colors seem a bit exaggerated - these pictures were for sure originally
mostly black and white, and whoever digitized them, added a lot of bright
colors. In reality it was greyish as in the last picture from Chernobyl. I
worked in a Soviet semi-military chip factory, it looked pretty much similar.

~~~
varjag
Seconded. Grew up in USSR, been to industrial sites, they were as bleak as the
everyday life.

Remember Gibson's quote about "sky was the color of TV tuned to dead channel"?
Well back home the whole manmade environment was like that.

------
Robotbeat
I have seen some 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1970s era control rooms in old wind
tunnels from NACA/NASA, and many of them look like this. My favorite is where
they indicators are in the shape of a big flow diagram so they're self-
describing in function as well.

------
_bxg1
This aesthetic always reminds me, weirdly enough, of 1971's Willy Wonka and
the Chocolate Factory. Several scenes go out of their way to look "high-tech",
and as a child of the 90s it was one of my few exposures to what that meant in
1970s terms.

------
chkaloon
Awesome. Some observations/questions:

\- The control rooms probably required a good amount of maintenance themselves
with all the mechanical switches, light bulbs, and paper loggers.

\- Why the white lab coats in a nuclear control room?

\- Would love to see the wiring behind these panels.

------
Ididntdothis
This stuff used to look high tech. Now it’s computer screens that look high
tech. I wonder what’s next. How will a control room in 50 years look or will
there be no control rooms?

~~~
GloriousKoji
It'll just be Alexa.

~~~
bregma
"Alexa, open the pod bay doors."

"I'm sorry, Dave, you know I can't do that."

------
dpflan
This reminds of content on the site OObject. It has lists of interesting
images of real-world things like control rooms, neutrino detectors, etc: like
these 12 space inflatables: [http://www.oobject.com/category/12-space-
inflatables/](http://www.oobject.com/category/12-space-inflatables/), or these
12 mobile bridges.

------
andybak
If you are a fan of switches, dials, chipped enamel paint, typed instruction
sheets and a vague 50s aesthetic I can thoroughly recommend this Soviet themed
space game (in VR):
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/579110/Interkosmos/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/579110/Interkosmos/)

~~~
Taikonerd
I was sure you were going to say Red Matter:
[https://store.steampowered.com/app/966680/Red_Matter/](https://store.steampowered.com/app/966680/Red_Matter/)

------
Cthulhu_
Part of me has always wanted to work in a control room, doing things with
buttons and switches and the like. Or operate heavy machinery.

But the other part knows it'll take a lot of training initially (domain
specific), followed by what likely is a lot of boredom. Working on a PC as a
developer with internet access gives a lot more stimulation and variation in
my day to day job.

------
ChrisMarshallNY
That is cool. Thanks for sharing it!

I remember seeing this image in an older version of Don Norman's famous book
_The Design of Everyday Things_
:[https://pictures.abebooks.com/JVALLES/3324134975.jpg](https://pictures.abebooks.com/JVALLES/3324134975.jpg)

I think that was a US plant, but it was a cool idea.

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TaylorAlexander
I’ve noticed that a lot of futuristic movies from the 1970’s (like on a space
ship) feature rooms where the walls are completely covered in buttons and
lights and stuff. From today’s perspective it looks ridiculous but when you
see these Soviet control rooms you can see why people would have found it
believable at the time.

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varjag
To those interested in Soviet industrial design, a selection of Technical
Aesthetics magazine issues dating back to 1960s:

[https://issuu.com/0083398](https://issuu.com/0083398)

Be aware though that most of these concepts never materialised and actual
aesthetics were rather grim for the most part.

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remarkEon
Where do I find more content like this? I absolutely love looking at and
reading about Soviet era tech - from nuclear reactors to their rockets. This
is history I’m itching to get more of. I’d also love to see some interviews of
the designers of these things, if they still exist.

And yes I watched Chernobyl on HBO and loved it.

~~~
keiferski
You might like [http://www.CalvertJournal.com](http://www.CalvertJournal.com)

~~~
remarkEon
This is great, thank you.

Do you speak Russian? How long did it take you to learn?

~~~
keiferski
Nope, unfortunately I don’t (yet), although I know the Cyrillic alphabet from
living in Belgrade for awhile, and I speak some Polish and Serbo-Croatian. I’d
say learning Russian is easier than it seems, especially if you’re from a
technical background and are comfortable with complex grammar structures.
Probably on par with Latin in terms of difficulty.

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analognoise
I want a fully accurate simulation of sitting in front of one of these control
panels, and a tutorial that explains what every single thing does.

There's so damn many knobs and buttons, and I have no idea how to interpret
what everything is.

Surely someone else out there would pay for ReactorControlSimulator 2020?

~~~
jpindar
There are reactor simulators, but the ones I've seen use ordinary GUIs. I
haven't seen any that tried to be visually accurate.

~~~
analognoise
Do you know the names of any, or where I could look?

I mean what if you had a fully immersive, functionally and spatially accurate
model of a reactor control room? How absolutely badass would that be?

~~~
jpindar
Here's a simple one [1] I had some fun with. (There's a Flash version too
[2]).

That one's just a game, so I have no idea how accurate it is. But if you
search you might find something that's used in some university's nuclear
engineering program or something like that.

Very realistic ones used for actual training exist - this one [3] uses VR! -
but those probably won't be online.

[1]
[http://www.ae4rv.com/store/nuke_pc.htm](http://www.ae4rv.com/store/nuke_pc.htm)

[2]
[http://esa21.kennesaw.edu/activities/nukeenergy/nuke.htm](http://esa21.kennesaw.edu/activities/nukeenergy/nuke.htm)

[3] [https://www.hitachi-
hgne.co.jp/en/business/examination/simul...](https://www.hitachi-
hgne.co.jp/en/business/examination/simulator/index.html)

~~~
analognoise
...yeah so long story short, I have had the "How do you LEARN that?" thought
before, which led me to some very niche companies that sell some (very
awesome) educational kit.

Like this: [https://www.turbinetechnologies.com/educational-lab-
products...](https://www.turbinetechnologies.com/educational-lab-
products/turbojet-engine-lab)

Maybe I could rig up an industrial-style control panel to an RPI and actually
run a simulation on that. Why go virtual when you can build some cool boxes? I
guess accuracy.

~~~
jpindar
I think I've seen something like that done to simulate an airplane cockpit.

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janee
I wonder how much design choice goes into the actual layout and controls being
used on these, i.e. is it mostly physical hardware constraints that dictate
the look or user interaction.

Wondering because I see a lot of symmetry in the panels, but others seem very
hodgepodge

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anyfoo
We are physical beings, and even as someone who has enjoyed working with
computers since a very young age in the 80s, I always felt that the more
things are virtualized into intangible data and user interfaces, the less
interesting and real things feel.

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jgalt212
2020 version, but even this is more for show than functionality.

[https://www.weytec.com/en/solutions/kvm-video-
wall/](https://www.weytec.com/en/solutions/kvm-video-wall/)

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ornornor
Would love to find high resolution files for these, so they can be printed on
a large format printer and hung to my wall. But the most I can find is 1000px
Eire which is not enough to print larger than a postcard afaik

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coryfklein
What is the purpose of these rooms, what do they control, and how? Like, what
information is it providing to the users, and what actions can they take by
flipping the switches or turning the knobs?

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dang
Discussed at the time, though only a bit:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17332791](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17332791)

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yumraj
What did the US control rooms from the same era look like?

Any links to photos somewhere?

~~~
watsocd
If you are talking pre-1970, they looked pretty much the same!

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FillardMillmore
Am I crazy, or does the fifth to last photo have a Windows XP screensaver?
Windows XP was released in 2001 and the Soviet Union was dissolved in 1991 -
what gives? Am I mistaken?

~~~
john2x
It's on an LCD panel, so new equipment brought into an old room.

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isoprophlex
Imagine the task of testing and maintaining all those dials and switches, and
the data lines flowing into them... i can't even keep a hand full of shell
scripts under control

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Simulacra
IIRC the photographed control rooms were often staged to look more high tech,
and functional than they really were. Like new paint on a tank with no running
engine.

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323454
How did they test a control room like this, with so many inputs and outputs?
It seems like there would be many opportunities to botch a contact or two.

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alfiedotwtf
Robert Moog had nothing on these Soviet beauties

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artsyca
Nowadays these rooms would be staffed by brocoders in t shirts where once it
was scientists in lab coats go figure

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colanderman
Does anyone know what those large centrally-located circular grids in a few of
the photos are?

~~~
pvarangot
I think that represents the vessel of a nuclear reactor. The things inside the
circle are probably representing clusters of rods or sensors spread around the
vessel and show the state of different subsystems or parts of the reactor that
need to be monitored.

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7leafer
The last photo of Chernobyl reactor 4 control room is the most reassuring of
them all.

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at_a_remove
I feel a strange urge to rewatch _Colossus: The Forbin Project_.

~~~
technothrasher
Have you read the books? They're even more of a hoot than the movie, which was
actually a reasonably faithful retelling of the first book and enjoyable in
its own right where it does diverge.

~~~
at_a_remove
Yeah, about fifteen years back. They were rather enjoyable.

Frankly I am surprised the movie got made. It's a little on the cerebral side.
There's something about the cold, tense abstraction of it that matched these
huge banks of somewhat cryptic control panels.

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Nginx487
In Soviet Russia, room controls you (Sorry, just a tradition:)

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WalterBright
I always wanted my computer setup to look like that.

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jdonaldson
I see these rooms as part of the "aesthetics of control" that is common in a
lot of communist and socialist cultures. The control and wall surfaces seem to
almost celebrate the existence and relationship between component dials and
indicators. Everything is highly centralized and intentional, and everything
has a place and role. This notion of "everything has a place" is common in
Soviet propaganda art as well.

Some of these control surfaces are as much a communication medium as they are
a functional one. In some cases I'm reminded of Egyptian hieroglyphics on
walls. They are an act of communication as much as an act of engineering.

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01100011
So what would you call this style? Relaypunk?

~~~
jpindar
I've seen the terms dieselpunk and atompunk.

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golemotron
They remind me of Wes Anderson's sets.

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bregma
Everything needs more Nixie tubes.

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laretluval
Not great, not terrible

