In 1958, Soviet scientists built an unusual computer that functioned on the basis of the ternary number system. It far surpassed its competitors, but then it mysteriously vanished when it was banned from mass production by Soviet officials.

This is the story of Setun, the world’s first ternary computer, designed around balanced ternary logic (−1, 0, +1) instead of binary. It was smaller, more efficient, and surprisingly powerful, yet it was buried by political infighting, bureaucratic resistance, and decisions that still remain unexplained.

In this video, we go over the forgotten history of Setun, the life of its creator Nikolai Brusentsov, and the unique mathematics behind ternary logic, three-valued computing, and the architecture that made Setun so revolutionary.

Sources, transcript and more available on codeolences.com

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▶️ This video is part of a series called "The Weird and the Wired"
You can find the whole playlist here    • [*] The Weird and the Wired  

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Writer and producer: Jakub (Codeolences)
Editor: Arjun Nyalpelly (www.linkedin.com/in/arjunnyalpelly)
3D Modeling: Fabian Olczak (www.magbase.pl)

Chapters:
00:00 The Setun Conspiracy
00:43 The M-2 Dispute and Brusentsov's Discovery
03:23 The Ternary Arithmetic
05:02 The Setun Project
07:05 The Architecture of Setun
09:47 The Bureaucratic Resistance
11:57 World's First Ternary Computer
14:39 Setun-70
15:54 Nastavnik and The Unexplained Destruction of Setun