Vol 46, No 1 (2025)

The article examines the history of the creation and testing of the first aircraft with rocket engine in the USSR. The events took place during World War II and the aircraft was from the start designed as a battleplane. A series of these aircrafts, intended to defend critical facilities from enemy bombers, was produced simultaneously with flight tests. On its seventh flight, the plane crashed and, for reasons still unclear, its test pilot, G. Ya. Bakhchivandzhi, was killed. This forced the decision to abandon the adoption of the BI interceptor for service use.

The article is based on the documents from three Moscow archives. Examination of these document sources allowed clarification of some issues, in particular, to put forward a new hypothesis concerning the causes of the plane crash in 1943

It is universally accepted that the early 15^th century Latin translation of the Greek manuscript of Claudius Ptolemy’s “Geography Manual” was the decisive event in the development of European instrumental cartography. A detailed analysis of the circumstances surrounding the translation of the “Manual” reveals a more complex picture. The first translation of the manuscript by the Florentine Jacopo d’Angelo attracted the humanists not for its mathematical part. They readily adopted the image of the world (imago mundi) proposed by Ptolemy and enthusiastically discussed the toponymics and descriptive geography in the treatise, and largely ignored its mathematical aspect – the geographic grid and the projection of a sphere onto a plane. It was only after Johann Regiomontanus’s criticism in the 1460s that the mathematical part of the treatise was completed and duly appreciated. The article shows that, in the course of almost a century-long assimilation of the treatise (which in humanist translation practice began to be commonly called “Geography”) the Renaissance scholars introduced a number of innovations into cartography that are lacking in Ptolemy’s treatise, and completely changed the methodology of instrumental measurements. Rather than talk about the direct inheritance of Ptolemy’s ideas by the Renaissance cartographic practice, it would, therefore, be more correct to talk about creative reworking of his cartographic recommendations, in which the development of trigonometry in the universities of the German speaking lands and the instrumental practice of urban architecture played a significant role.

The article analyzes hour marking on the ancient Egyptian vertical sundial made of a carved limestone slab, discovered in the Valley of the Kings in 2013 by the University of Basel’s archaeological expedition. Calculations are given of the angles between hour lines and noon line for a vertical sundial with an inclined gnomon and it is concluded that the markings on the tiles correspond to the hour markings of the vertical sundial, with a half-hour shift after midday. A hypothesis is proposed and proved concerning simultaneous use of the vertical sundial with an inclined gnomon, similar to that discovered in the Valley of the Kings, and the ancient Egyptian L-shaped sundial.

The restoration of the economic mechanism in Soviet Russia after the end of the Civil War in its territory encountered significant difficulties, further complicated by the economic blockade by the Western powers. In addition to investments, the RSFSR Peopleʼs Commissariat of Foreign Affairs together with the Concession Committee under the Presidium of the Supreme Council of National Economy, set up in 1921, were seeking access to scientific and technical innovations, establishing relations with foreign companies. In the 1920s, civilian cooperation in the field of technology was carried out in the form of the concession enterprises. The standard concession agreement included a clause of mandatory modernization of production processes. To this end, considerable privileges were granted for importing equipment (machinery, cars, etc.) in the USSR. The most active participant in the Soviet concession program was German business, which had been under restrictions on the global market after World War I. German businessmen traditionally geared towards Russian consumers and raw materials. They regarded the concessions granted to them as an opportunity to import goods in the USSR duty-free, these goods being primarily agricultural and automotive equipment that could be purchased for next to nothing in Germany after the hyperinflation that hit its economy in 1923. German machines were often imported without production justification and without regard to their suitability for Russian conditions, and their testing sometimes resulted in premature wear, downtime, and losses. In this context American models appeared preferable, which determined the main direction of technical cooperation in the 1930s. The documents of the Main Concession Committee that formed the basis of the study reflect a broad range of problems and issues related to the evaluation of the results of using foreign equipment in the Soviet production facilities.

Based on a range of sources, the article analyzes the following statements that are common in the geological and historical literature: the amethyst deposits in Russian Lapland have been known since the 16^th century; the first information about these deposits was provided by O. Magnus in his “History of the Northern Peoples”; these amethysts have been mined by the Solovetsky (Solovki) Monastery since the 16^th century. As a result of our research, however, these statements cannot be not confirmed either by the content of written sources or by archaeological finds. It is established that the Cape Korabl amethyst deposit was first described in 1834 by N. V. Shirokshin, captain of the Corps of Mining Engineers. Since then, the information about the amethysts in Russian Lapland was being spread among both the professional geological community and a wider audience interested in the research and exploration of the Far North of European Russia. Therefore, any large-scale amethyst mining on the White Sea coast of Lapland, either by the Solovetsky Monastery or by anyone else, in the 16^th–19^th centuries is out of the question. Accordingly, the territory of Russian Lapland cannot be regarded as a historical amethyst distribution center in Muscovy (Russian Empire).

The article reviews the history of technologies for radiation protection in space that evolved in Russia and globally in the 20^th – early 21^st century. We have analyzed the relevant historical sources and proposed a general classification of radiation protection technologies as well as a periodization of their evolution. About 100 protection technologies were reviewed and 20 significant cases that reflect the history and characteristics of protection technologies and the process of their evolution were analyzed in more detail. It is noted that the process of finding solution to the problem of protecting people from radiation in space and adoption of new technologies was, and remains, slow. While the prevalent type of protection is physical shielding (about 70 % of technologies), new active physical and biological technologies are also being developed and the combinations of different protection technologies are practiced too. It is noted that the knowledge and experience in creating and applying technologies to protect people from radiation in space possess an important “reverse” effect and may be used to protect people’s health and life on Earth too.

S.Yu. Witte is widely known as Russia’s Minister of Railways (1892) and Minister of Finance (1892–1903); his efforts led to accelerated development of Russian industry and to the construction of the Great Siberian Route. Less is known, however, about Witte’s role in the studies and exploration of Russia’s North even though it was he who in 1897 supported Rear Admiral S. O. Makarov and Professor D. I. Mendeleev’s proposal of the construction of the arctic-class icebreaker Yermak.

In June 1894, on the steamship Lomonosov of the Arkhangelsk-Murman steamship company, Witte traveled the Northern Dvina and the White and Barents Seas, looking for a site to build a military port. In particular, he visited the Yokang Islands, Teriberberskaya Bay and Ekaterina Harbour, Ura Bay and port Vladimir, Pechenga Bay, and then returned to St. Petersburg via Norway, Sweden, and the Baltic Sea. After the visit to the Bezymyannyi Island which was part of the group of Yokang Islands, the party that accompanied Witte drew up a protocol with a petition to rename this island after Witte. In December 1894, Admiral N. M. Chikhachev who was in charge of the Naval Ministry ordered to rename the Bezymyannyi Island the Witte Island in the new maps. This article is devoted to the analysis of this historical episode.