Go back in time and be a chaebol

Chapter 1365: The Race between Horse and Train (First Update, Please Subscribe)
(NBC stands for North Borneo Company)

The office was quiet.

Only the printer is continuously outputting the calculation results!

The numbers printed on the paper made people look at the results in their hands that had not yet been calculated. At this moment, everyone fell silent.

At this moment, there was even a bitter expression on their faces. No one spoke, and everyone was silent. What else could they say now?

Now they all seemed to be thinking of the picture in the history book - a picture of a horse racing against a locomotive during the Industrial Revolution!
Now, they are the stupid horse!
Not only is it stupid, but it's also doomed to be eliminated!

Back then, the invention of railways changed the world, but what about this?

Staring at the computer, the engineers didn't know the answer, but they all knew another answer in their hearts - with the time saved from computing, Westerners could do more things.

Gusev, who was standing by, stared at the green computer and asked.

"Can you take such advanced equipment out of the country?"

In his opinion, how could such an advanced machine be taken abroad for use?
"why not?"

Zhou Bicheng asked back:

"We need it for our work. At NBC, almost every office has one. If it weren't too expensive, everyone would probably have one..."

The last sentence made some people lose their defense, and some even broke their pencils!
Is this a Western country?

The impact that advanced productivity brought to the engineers behind the Iron Curtain on that day was unimaginable. They just looked at the electronic computer.

People's eyes are complicated and their mood is heavy!

……

"If it were in the Soviet Union, he would be thrown into prison and all of them would be thrown into Siberia!"

In an office on the eighth floor of Lubyanka Square, looking at the photos taken from Togliatti, Colonel Vyacheski said:

"Because of the leak!"

"Yes, this computer is NBC's most advanced personal computer, and we only have less than 20 of them."

The lieutenant standing before the colonel said:
"The military may have some, but there are no more than 200 in the entire Soviet Union."

this is the truth.

Sometimes the reality is so cruel, in NBC, computers are just ordinary office tools, but here they have become some kind of high-tech.

"It's really hard to imagine. They didn't keep such an advanced computer secret at all."

In their minds, any advanced things always need to be kept secret, after all, to prevent the enemy from snooping. This kind of secrecy is not only for foreigners, but also for their own country.

It is precisely because of this war mentality that they find it hard to imagine that NBC would sell this kind of electronic computer publicly and even allow engineers to take it to other countries.

For people who are accustomed to the war mentality, all this is too unbelievable.

So much so that they couldn't understand why this was happening anyway?
That's why there is a feeling that those people should be sent to Siberia to feel the cold wind of Siberia, and then they can understand the importance of confidentiality.

"The fact that they don't keep anything secret is actually a good thing for our work, Colonel."

The lieutenant said:

"Isn't it our job to get intelligence on this?"

Vyachevsky nodded. Months ago, the KGB established Bureau T, whose mission was to acquire Western equipment and technology to enhance the Soviet Union's ability to produce integrated circuits.

"This is indeed beneficial to our work, but we should also note that there are many better things in the laboratory of NBC Electronics Company. The radiation-proof chip used in their navigation satellite is said to be a chip with extremely excellent performance."

The lieutenant said:

"Better than Athlon?"

"It's not a chip!" Vyachevsky shook his head and said:

"Unlike us who chose vacuum tubes more than a decade ago, NBC chose transistors and integrated circuits from the beginning. They also realized that they would be used not only in launching satellites and landing on the moon, but also in every electronic product used by their military, so they invested heavily in transistors and chips."

In fact, due to the limitations of technology, NBC's early integrated circuits faced problems such as impure semiconductor materials and substandard processes. The yield rate was extremely low during large-scale production, and performance improvements were relatively slow.

In contrast, the electron tubes with mature technology can further tap their potential. In addition, Soviet Academician Valentin Avdeev has cracked the electron tube miniaturization technology, successfully reducing the size of the electron tube to a few or even a dozen times the original size, and greatly enhancing its reliability.

This invention not only greatly increased the performance of the Soviet Union's large vacuum tube computers, but also allowed fighter planes, tanks and other weapons to be equipped with more complex electronic equipment, fully meeting the needs of the military.

On one side was the far-leading mature technology, and on the other side was an unreliable new gadget. The pragmatic Soviet Union unsurprisingly sentenced the transistor to death.

However, while the Soviet Union was obsessed with "miniaturization of electron tubes" and reveling in its own achievements in electron tubes, NBC was running wildly on another track. After solving problems such as high-purity silicon and production processes, it ushered in a blowout development of integrated circuits. As semiconductor materials and integrated circuit processes became more and more mature, NBC's chips also evolved at a terrifying speed.

The advent of the exascale supercomputer "Deep Blue 2000" at the end of last year shocked the world and also woke up the Soviet Union. After learning that NBC used chips in intercontinental missiles, the Soviet Union finally panicked and decided to transform and develop chips. Considering the huge gap and fearing that they could not catch up, the Soviet leaders decided to hand over the task to a more efficient agency, the agency they trusted the most, the KGB.

So a month ago, KGB established Bureau T. The reason they established this department was that they hoped to use special means to improve their integrated circuit level and catch up with countries such as NBC.

As the head of this department, Vyachevsky naturally knew that he had a heavy responsibility.

"In the past few years, they have solved many problems in the production of integrated circuits and developed a series of related technologies, such as the extraction of high-purity silicon, photolithography machines, photoresists, etc. We are far behind them in the production technology of integrated circuits, and the Kremlin's request is that we quickly obtain this technology from NBC, the United States and other European countries through special means."

Once again, picking up the photo from the table and looking at the green "Wang An 100 Electronic Calculator", Vyachevsky said:

"I don't know how important integrated circuits are, but I know the Kremlin is paying close attention to this. Western electronic equipment is becoming more and more sophisticated and miniaturized, and its performance is becoming more and more powerful. Chips have been rapidly popularized in civilian equipment and widely used by the military. No matter how our scientists improve the electron tubes, they cannot achieve the same effect.

If we don’t have integrated circuits with the same performance, then sooner or later, they will use weapons with advanced integrated circuits to hit us, so we must solve this problem.”

After he finished speaking, he looked at the lieutenant in front of him and said.

“So now you need to prepare to get there and start working on this.”

For the Soviet Union, the issue they have always been worried about is security. After all, the painful lessons of the Great Patriotic War more than 20 years ago made almost everyone dare not take the war issue lightly. After all, no one can guarantee that the enemy will attack them again in the early morning.

"So when should I go?"

The lieutenant asked without thinking about the task assigned by the chief.

"Do I have a corresponding contact there?"

To go to a place to carry out such a mission, you definitely need a contact person.

"This is a brand new industry. We didn't have the right people in this industry before, so everything starts from scratch. First, we need to send some people into this industry. Your job there is to be their upline, control those people, and obtain intelligence in this area through them."

This is the most basic intelligence operation. It seems basic, but everything is starting from scratch. You can imagine how difficult it is.

Then the colonel took out a file and said:
"This is the person we're going to send out. He's going to go to NBC through other channels. You guys go in there separately."

On this day in the office of Bureau T, a plan aimed at improving the level of Soviet integrated circuits through special means was quietly launched.

A few hours later, the lieutenant in his coat left Bianka Square, walked into the subway station and got on the subway.

Although the female officer was very beautiful and her uniform also highlighted her heroic appearance, no one looked at her. At most, they glanced at her from a distance and then turned their heads away in a hurry. After all, everyone knew what her uniform meant. As for those people, everyone kept a distance.

The lieutenant was already accustomed to people's reactions like this; after all, she took this subway to and from get off work every day.

But what was different today was that this was her last time taking this subway home from get off work.

In a few days, she would go to a strange place, which was not even a country, but a company - a colonial company belonging to the old times, in an extremely special capacity.

Soon he got off at another subway station, and when he got off the train she saw a poster on the wall. The poster depicted an image of a soldier from the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Below him were a series of dark shadows.

The poster clearly states:

"Be careful, spies are stealing our secrets."

(End of this chapter)