
Photos of Soviet control rooms - _0nac
http://blog.presentandcorrect.com/27986-2
======
jpatokal
Submitter here. Not my blog post, but glad to see this got some traction!

Random memory of a Soviet control room: in the late 1990s, the rave scene was
booming in Estonia and I ended up wrangling an invite to a party called "Beast
Feast" [1] arranged by fellow promoters VIBE. The venue was a giant old
Soviet-era factory in the industrial zone of Liiva Keskus [2]. The factory
floor, complete with random, rusty machines, was used for a "fashion show"
featuring models wearing only animal skulls, horns, tails etc, plus stacks of
speakers reaching to the ceiling and a thousand-plus ravers dancing. The
control room -- which looked exactly like the ones in the pictures -- was
carpeted with mattresses, decked out with disco lighting, and there was a DJ
playing chill-out music. One of the most memorable parties I've been to!
Unfortunately I can't find any pictures of it online...

[1]
[http://www.moles.ee/99/May/26/5-3.html](http://www.moles.ee/99/May/26/5-3.html)

[2] [http://www.rrk.ee/?op=body&id=86](http://www.rrk.ee/?op=body&id=86)

~~~
Koshkin
Reads like a scene from the Planet of the Apes...

------
monocasa
Nothing can beat Project Cybersyn's control room, IMO.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn#/media/File...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Cybersyn#/media/File%3ACybersyn_control_room.jpg)

~~~
digi_owl
Too bad they could not be allowed to succeed or fail on their own...

~~~
philwelch
There have been multiple attempts at planned economies throughout history.
None of them were terribly successful, and it's not entirely clear why using
spiffy early-70's style computers and knock-off Star Trek chairs would make
that much of a difference. Although, it does look pretty cool.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Most planned economies were founded before the availability of real-time,
computer-driven decision support systems. Maybe it couldn't've worked, I
dunno, but it was a bold experiment, and probably preferable to the brutal
military junta that destroyed it.

~~~
philwelch
There’s already a real-time decision support system that also happens to be
computer-driven these days. It’s called the market.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
You seem to be ignoring people's actual posts to score points against straw
Communists. Nobody's saying we should all switch to a planned economy.

~~~
philwelch
We were talking about Cybersyn, right? Planned economies (and the merits of a
particular Chilean attempt at such) was the point.

I took your post to suggest that Cybersyn used more sophisticated real-time
mechanisms to run the economy and was hence quite different from other
attempts at planned economies in the past. My point was that those mechanisms,
in function, probably would just be an “ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-
ridden, slow implementation of a market” at best anyway.

If anything’s a straw man argument, it’s the irrelevant discussion of
“military juntas”, as if military juntas are fundamentally incompatible with
using 1970’s-era computers to centrally plan and control a country’s economy.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
> *If anything’s a straw man argument, it’s the irrelevant discussion of
> “military juntas”

What? We're talking about how Cybersyn was physically destroyed by Pinochet's
junta after they overthrew Allende. That's what digi_owl was referring to with
"Too bad they could not be allowed to succeed or fail on their own." This is
about the coup and its aftermath, not just an economic policy.

------
ThinkingGuy
All my life, I've had a strange fascination with this kind of thing: control
rooms, cockpit instrument panels, or any sort of location with lots of of
dials, buttons, gauges, switches, and indicators. Even Microsoft Windows
"Control Panel" kind of excited me the first time I saw it.

Now, seeing this posted here makes me wonder if maybe there are others out
there who share this particular quirk of mine.

~~~
owenversteeg
Oh absolutely! I've had the same thing too for as long as I can remember.
Aircraft cockpits especially interest me, and I can spend hours looking at
physical switches.

I created a subreddit, maybe there are more of us? /r/ControlPanels/

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fitzroy
These are beautiful — especially the Metsamor nuclear power plant (white table
tops, with wood trim).

Not strictly related, but the Death Star control panel in the original Star
Wars was actually a modified Grass Valley television switcher.
[http://www.partsofsw.com/dscntrl.htm](http://www.partsofsw.com/dscntrl.htm)

------
ChuckMcM
Something I have always imagined doing was to build 'paneling' for lab that
followed the theme of a control room like this. At Google we discussed making
the inside of a conference room appear to be a shuttle in flight. (it was
possible as it had no windows.) We figured we could build a slightly interior
wall (maybe 3" thick) and rig up panels with various micro processors and left
over displays from the Android project. It probably would have been a $20,000
conference room if we had done it. :-)

~~~
bitwize
In Google's ITA Software division there is a conference room made up to look
like the inside of an airliner.

Albeit it's far, far roomier than any actual airliner I've ever been on.

------
KGIII
These are the kinds of places where I'd be fired on the very first day, likely
escorted away by security.

I like to call it intellectual curiosity, but it's really poor impulse
control. I'd push all those buttons. I couldn't help myself.

~~~
flycaliguy
you should get into modular synths.

~~~
KGIII
Funny you mention that...

I have played at both hardware and software synths. I will never be
productive, but I do have fun.

A friend also has a recording studio. (I used to play guitar as a source of
additional income, some studio and some performance work.) There are so many
buttons, sliders, and knobs! I will go play with them.

One of the reasons I enjoy my practice time (I still play but it's not for
financial gain) is because it gives me time to play with the various settings.

It's kind of how I learn things.

This might seem off-topic, but I don't think it is. See, it's the love of
poking buttons and moving sliders that has given me the 'hacking mentality.'
It is the love of experimentation and willingness to press unknown buttons,
metaphoric or real, that seems to be a trait of 'hackers.'

We may not like to admit it, but I suspect a large number of HN viewers would
not fare well if locked in a baren room, devoid of everything vut single red
button that said, 'DO NOT PUSH.'

I suspect that it is because of our willingness to poke these metaphoric
buttons that we are driven to learn, create, and take risks. We gleefully push
those buttons and learn more, create new processes, and discover.

Polite society probably calls it intellectual curiosity. Really, many of us
just like buttons, knobs, and sliders - be they metaphors or nuclear control
reactors.

~~~
Gravityloss
Bret Victor often talks about this how you learn by tweaking and observing
results realtime

------
hitekker
Nice paper going into detail about the circumstances behind these rooms and
the Soviet push for Cybernization:

[http://web.mit.edu/slava/homepage/articles/Gerovitch-
InterNy...](http://web.mit.edu/slava/homepage/articles/Gerovitch-
InterNyet.pdf)

~~~
pvg
The pictured control rooms are mostly just control rooms of power plants, not
levers for adjusting the Soviet economy. The paper is not really about these
control rooms.

~~~
dom0
Most power plants have control rooms that look pretty much like these; they
fulfil the same function.

~~~
pvg
Yes the 'Soviet' bit just makes these pictures sound more exotic than they are
(and it seems they originally had a couple of American ones in there by
'mistake') but the point is, none of this has anything to do with cybersyn-
like networked command centers for the command economy. Which is what the
linked paper is about.

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nateguchi
Does anyone know what the circular indicators in the middle of some of these
control rooms are for?

Right in the centre of the indicator wall here:
([http://blog.presentandcorrect.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/09...](http://blog.presentandcorrect.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/09/5309792-425120.jpg))

~~~
21
Closeups:

[https://carlwillis.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/dscf0806_v1.j...](https://carlwillis.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/dscf0806_v1.jpg)
(zoom in)

[http://www.m1key.me/photography/chernobyl_questions_answers_...](http://www.m1key.me/photography/chernobyl_questions_answers_2/chernobyl_questions_answers_2_25.jpg)

[https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/45/129495116_40011d1db7_b.jpg](https://c1.staticflickr.com/1/45/129495116_40011d1db7_b.jpg)

~~~
lobster_johnson
The first image is from a blog with lots of information and high-resolution
photos of old reactors, including Chernobyl:

[https://carlwillis.wordpress.com/](https://carlwillis.wordpress.com/)

------
officemonkey
Having been in current U.S. nuclear power plant control rooms, they're not
substantially different.

~~~
westiseast
Same, went on a tour of a U.K. nuclear power plant and its all 1960s tech like
this. I asked why and they said you can't afford the risk of bugs/problems for
the efficiency gains you might achieve with new kit.

~~~
officemonkey
I talked to the person who wrote a program that displayed reactor data on a
computer screen. She wrote it in FORTRAN in the late 80s.

They're still using it 30 years later. She confirmed that her programming
passed Y2K with flying colors.

------
jaclaz
Side note, anyone remembers the Star-Trek inspired control room the NSA built?

[https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/15/nsa-
mi...](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/15/nsa-mind-keith-
alexander-star-trek)

The sliding doors with a "whoosh" sound are probably among the things every
geek loves but is afraid to confess...

------
pvg
NASA recently published a picture of Annie Easley standing in front of
something impressively retro-future-looking but didn't include an explanation
of what it was:

[https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/annie-easley-computer-
sci...](https://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/annie-easley-computer-scientist-
and-mathematician)

~~~
rzzzt
My guess, after a quick google search:
[https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/facilities/erb/turbo/#small-
engine...](https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/facilities/erb/turbo/#small-engine-
components-compressor-test-facility)

The signs on the top of each section says "air 40 psig" and "ref. air 10
psig", and this matches the capabilities described in the link: "The
compressor can draw air from either an atmospheric intake, a 40-psig pressure
source, or 10-psig refrigerated air system". The image also has GRC in its
file name.

(It might be a complete miss, though)

------
masswerk
The first photo is from the NS Savannah, the first nuclear-powered merchant
ship, built in the US in the late 1950s as a demonstration project for the
potential use of nuclear energy:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NS_Savannah)

------
droidist2
This one looks intriguing, any more info on it?

[http://blog.presentandcorrect.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/09...](http://blog.presentandcorrect.com/wp-
content/uploads/2017/09/Tsentralnij-pult-upravleniya.jpg)

~~~
pvg
It's part of the control room of this hydro-electric power plant:

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

~~~
droidist2
Thanks!

------
SN76477
Looks like an analog future.

------
apostleofhustle
where are the synths

------
growlix
It is amazing how many of these control rooms are just huge surfaces covered
in dials and instruments that lack any representative structure of the system
they are monitoring and controlling.

~~~
barrkel
I counted 14 of 22 that integrated dials or instruments into a diagrammatic
structure of the system; it could be more that I couldn't see from the zoom
level. The degree to which instruments (and especially, status lights it looks
like) were integrated into diagrams was the most interesting thing.

------
pkaye
Back in the early 90s I got a chance to visit the BART train control center in
the bay area. Surprisingly the controls were as old looking fixed displays as
this stuff.

------
baxtr
I really love those Soviet white hats. Does anybody know if they served any
real purpose, or was that just soviet chic?

------
baybal2
This how all big plants worked before Scadas came

------
throw-away-8
Soviet mission control center:

(1973+)
[http://epizodsspace.airbase.ru/bibl/energia46-96/357-1.jpg](http://epizodsspace.airbase.ru/bibl/energia46-96/357-1.jpg)

(1980)
[http://epizodsspace.airbase.ru/bibl/energia46-96/357-2.jpg](http://epizodsspace.airbase.ru/bibl/energia46-96/357-2.jpg)

------
m3kw9
We are missing the one with Homer in it

------
amasad
This is beautiful! It's amusing to think that most of this can be replaced
with a single iPad.

~~~
flatline
My thought was exactly the opposite. Some of them have modern computers right
in the control room and still have all this gadgetry. There's just no way to
reproduce that level of visual information on a small screen. Even at work I
sometimes struggle with dual 32" monitors, I just need more real estate and
have to constantly switch between windows and desktops. And that's for fairly
mundane development tasks.

~~~
lucaspiller
My impression was that the control console is probably coupled too tightly to
the control system, that removing and replacing it with something modern
wouldn’t be feasable or worth the effort.

I find it unlikely that they need to see all those dials at once, but without
a modal system to switch between data views they need to show every data
point. On a modern system you could achieve the same by having views specific
to each task, and an alerting system for when a data point for that task goes
out of range.

Here is an image from a modern Austrian steel factory run by 3 people - half
of the screens on the top row are just showing CCTV images:

[http://pop.h-cdn.co/assets/17/25/1498153350-699054458-1.jpg](http://pop.h-cdn.co/assets/17/25/1498153350-699054458-1.jpg)

------
herdrick
Cool pics are what killed the intellectual quality of Reddit. Let's not upvote
this.

~~~
newman8r
I think in this case the images can start some interesting conversations about
UX/ human interface devices/ industrial design.

Posting memes would be a different story though - I'd probably bail at that
point.

