Meet the Soviet smart house system that was never put into mass production
The ‘Sphinx’ system looked more as a futuristic computer.
In reality, this futuristic computer was the Soviet ‘Sphinx’ station, developed in 1986. Not just a computer, but a whole concept of electronic equipment for the house. In short, a Soviet “smart house”!
The idea was to digitize and localize all kinds of information: music, TV, videos, slides, educational and game programs, texts. Plus voice and remote control.
On the bigger screens, you could watch movies and TV shows. Small wireless ones could be carried around the apartment or taken in the car to listen to audiobooks and music or watch videos.
The ‘Sphinx’ could store any information, as well as provide the weather forecast. In addition, the installation included a prototype of a smart watch.
The customer was the government itself, the USSR State Committee for Science and Technology.
There were no specific technical tasks: the Soviet engineers were simply assigned to create a prospective computer. And the designers of the All-Union Research Institute of Technical Aesthetics developed such a thing.
Unfortunately, like many other promising developments of this institute, they made only a sample, which was not launched into widespread production.
Would you buy such a thing for your home?
