No, they disassembled German optics industry plants in 1945, moved them to the Soviet Union and started cranking out great cameras based on German designs. I've heard that some Soviet cameras had Leica labeled parts inside.

Stuff like that happened repeatedly: GAZ Chaika was a copy of Packard; SM-1 computer was a copy of PDP 11/34; Tu-144 looked just like Concorde, etc. etc.

▲

hapless 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Chaika was not a copy of a Packard. (They certainly admired the Packard bodywork, but Soviet industry was in no way ready to clone a Packard sedan)

Tu-144 was not a copy of the Concorde. (Convergent evolution is not the same as copying a design!)

The Soviets did clone a lot of DEC gear but I don't think SM-1, specifically, was a DEC clone. (In this lastmost case, the Soviets were left cloning computer equipment because it was forbidden to export to COMECON states)

	▲	prezk 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sorry, SM-4 not SM-1, was a full emulation of 11/40, with UNIBUS, and all. There were DEC copyright strings latent in some system files. It was a pretty good copy, but quite unreliable, and the reason was quite pedestrian---the connectors! It was a good lesson on how the entire technology chain needs to be high quality for the final product to work well. Another example I forgot: the first Soviet nuke was directly copied from the stolen Fat Man design. Of course later they did novel stuff, especially the fusion designs of Sacharov et al. It is well known that KGB got hold of the Concorde blueprints, so yeah, not a direct copy but certainly a lot of influence in that design. Again. the details like engine performance made the difference: apparently Tu144 had to continuously use afterburners to stay supersonic. It was also quite unreliable---I've heard that towards its end of life it was just flying cargo and airmail.

▲

totierne2 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Swan and b1.. which came 1st...