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• Posted June 24, 2014, 11:49 a.m. - 10 years, 6 months ago

Country Spotlight: Russia

One of the biggest countries to use Infix PDF Editor is Russia – the translation features built into the software make converting text from one language to another (and sometimes back again) extremely easy! Seeing a lot of downloads coming in from Russia piqued our interest, and we’ve had a deeper look into the country and their technological achievements over the years!

Inventors

Alexander Popov

We all know what a radio is, but do we all know who invented it? The credit goes to Alexander Popov, a physics professor who invented, built and displayed the world’s first radio set in 1885 at St Petersburg University. Because he worked for a military institution, however, he was unable to commercialise and publish his work – the credit for that goes to Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi.

May 7, the day Popov demonstrated his work, is still celebrated as Radio Day in the Russian Federation

Vladimir Zworykin

Zworykin was actually responsible for one of the biggest inventions of the 20^th century, the electronic TV! The system used cathode ray tubes and was first demonstrated in the 1920s. By 1929, he had filed a patent for his improved cathode ray tube, and introduced the “Kinescope” receiver – a type of cathode ray tube with a fluorescent screen upon which a beam of electrons is directed to reproduce images.

Zworykin retired in 1954 but then went on to found the International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering

Companies

RMCSoft

An IT company founded in 2004, RMCSoft is part of the RELEX Group and specialises in a range of IT related fields, including technical support, system integration and software product development

Yandex

Russia’s biggest search engine company Yandex was founded in 1997 and controls approx.. 60% of the Internet search marketspace, as well as coming in as the 4^th largest search engine worldwide.

Yandex recognises Russian inflection in queries, something other search engines struggle with.

Innovation

Airliners

The first commercial aircraft intended for carrying multiple passengers was the Sikorsky Ilya Muromets class of airliner. It may have been a pre-war plane (built 1913) but had a separate passenger saloon, toilet, lounge area, bedroom and wicker seating.

Space Tourism

Desirable for some, space tourism is fast becoming popular, albeit with limited spaces to actually fly into orbit. The Russian Space Agency are, to date, the only company providing transport for commuters into space, onboard Russian spacecraft Soyuz.

The Russian Space Agency was established in 1992, although before that was known as the Soviet Space Program and founded in 1922.

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• Fun, Facts & Figures