In the mid-1980s, in the USSR, they not only played perestroika and remade Simca 1307 into Moskvich-2141, but also tried to predict the future of an ordinary consumer. It was quite difficult, especially in conditions of total deficit. However, Soviet scientists were able to predict the emergence of laptops, smartphones, smart glasses and wireless headphones.
It's funny that even then, 30 years ago, the elements of wearable electronics were well thought out:
“The most unexpected solutions are possible here: for example, sunglasses, at the user’s command, turn into a display showing the time or other necessary information (pulse rate, body temperature or ambient air).”
We are talking about a project born in the bowels of the All-Union Research Institute of Technical Aesthetics (VNIITE). With some reservations, this project can be called a "smart home" system. The institute figured out the main drawback of all household devices - the lack of a single system that could combine a TV, tape recorder, video recorder, computer, printer, speakers. And they proposed a solution to this problem in the magazine "for September 1987.
So, get acquainted. Before you is the Superfunctional Integrated Communication System - SPHINX, created by Igor Lysenko, Alexei and Maria Kolotushkin, Marina Mikheeva, Elena Ruzova under the direction of Dmitry Azrikan. The developers described the project as one of the possible design solutions for the 2000 home television and radio complex. It was not so much a project of a thing as a project of the principle of interaction between consumers and sources of information.
Almost all devices are easy to identify, right?
The idea seems quite simple and rational. The SPHINX was supposed to unite all input and output devices with a common processor, which also acts as a data storage and a means of receiving and transmitting them outside. The information received by the processor was distributed over screens, columns and other blocks. In order for these blocks to be placed throughout the apartment (for example, a film with an audio track is shown on the screen in one room, a video game in another, a computer with work tasks operates in the office, and an audio book is read in the kitchen), it was proposed to lay in the apartment (perhaps even during the construction of the house) the so-called "busbars". That is, some universal cables that could power the electronics and control it through the processor.
Quote from the article:
“SPHINX is the radio-electronic equipment of the dwelling of the future. All work on receiving, recording, storing and distributing various types of information is carried out by a central apartment processor with a universal storage device. The latest research gives reason to hope for the emergence of such a universal carrier in the near future. It will replace (at first supplement) gramophone records, audio and video cassettes, current CDs, photographs and slides (freeze frames), printed texts, etc.”
Left - block with the central processor SPHINX. These strange “petals” in the tail are storage media, analogues of modern SSDs, HDDs, flash drives, or, in extreme cases, CDs. In the USSR, they were sure that at first the universal storage medium would be disk, and then crystalline, without moving mechanisms in the reading devices
In the middle - two options for a large control panel. Blue - touch, in the recess has an additional small hand control. White - pseudo-sensory, in the recess - a telephone receiver. It could be connected to the screen in the form of a tablet and get something reminiscent of a modern laptop. To the right of the keyboard is a pair of "more - less" keys for adjusting any parameters.
On right — a small hand-held remote control with a docked display. The diagonal arrangement of the buttons, as it was then considered, is extremely convenient for working with the remote control. Each key had to be highlighted, if necessary, it was possible to activate the sound response to pressing.
Note that the SPHINX devices were divided into three groups:
- Wearable
- housing related
- Transport related
It is easy to recognize "smart bracelets" and watches, "smart home" and car on-board computers.
What could be done with the help of the SPHINX? Yes, the same thing that we do today: watch TV and movies from the media library, listen to music, get weather data, make video calls.
“Here you can watch movies, video programs, TV shows, works of art, other images and soundtracks, collective computer games, fragments of a family album can also be displayed here. The family can arrange friendly teleconferences or business meetings. Additional information (time, weather, information, other channels, etc.) can be shown on the cut-in frame”,
- dreamed in the USSR.
Both wired and wireless connection of other devices were provided. The developers were sure that the processor would be able to receive information and relay it to other household devices via a radio signal (the prototype of Wi-Fi). The central processor was supposed to contain a block that converts various types of signals into digital form.
The processor itself acted only as a means to distribute tasks to other devices. Therefore, it did not need to be kept in a conspicuous place. True, if you stuff the device somewhere far away, then it will be difficult to insert “petals” into it - information custodians. It was assumed that each such disk is responsible for leisure or workload for one family member. That is, for example, films and games are recorded on one medium, music and educational programs are recorded on another, business and creative applications are on the third, etc.
The necessary content of the central processor had to broadcast on the display.
“SPHINX allows you to start equipping an apartment with any essential monofunction. The number of devices is not growing in direct proportion to the number of users and functions, but very slightly.”
- in fact, this is the idea of a smartphone. How many applications (functions) do not install, and the size of the device does not change. Unless you have to insert a larger memory card.
The system looked , but all the possibilities of the SPHINX, as well as the system itself, at that time looked good only on the pages of magazines. Creating a workable layout, not to mention putting the idea into practice, was out of the question. The Soviet Union was rapidly approaching the last stage of collapse, with coupons for sugar, soap and meat, with aggravated ethnic conflicts and the impoverishment of the population. Who was interested in the fantasies of some designers and engineers?
And then what?
As for VNIITE, nothing interesting happened there until the mid-2000s. The state has changed, and if earlier almost all products manufactured in the USSR passed through VNIITE, now this was not the case. The institute became impoverished, lost branches in other cities and many employees, closed the design center on Pushkinskaya Square. The staff was mainly engaged in scientific work with practically the same composition as in the 80s.
However, in the mid-2013s, the situation changed. New people came, new ideas appeared. And in 461, the research institute was attached to the RTU MIREA University by order of the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation No. 2014. Its activities did not end there. On the contrary, since XNUMX, the annual International Day of Industrial Design has been held (including on the territory of Skolkovo). The ergonomics laboratory was launched again, the department of theory and methodology and the design department were resumed, state assignments and educational projects appeared. Among the most anticipated projects, we single out the Ergonomic Atlas. Why is it important? Sergei Moiseev, Development Director of the Institute, says:
“Since 1971, anthropometric indicators have not been measured in our country, and their physical parameters change over time. Atlas is already at the final stage of work, it will be released soon. This is an important thing, because now in Russia the standards for clothing, labor protection standards, workplaces - all this corresponds to the measurements of 1971.
As for the head of the SPHINX project, Dmitry Azrikan, he moved to the USA, where he became the design director of International Promotion Inc. In Chicago, and received more than a hundred certificates for industrial designs and patents in Russia and the United States. And the author's training program for designers developed by him at Western Michigan University (USA) was approved and received a certificate from NASAD (National Association of Schools of Art and Design).
Dmitry, by the way, finalized his idea. In 1990, his concept "» . And at the exhibition in 1992 in Japan, a flurry of emotions caused a futurological concept "».
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Source: habr.com