I want to apologize to all the Portuguese speakers for my pronunciations. I tried. Links: The Asianometry Newsletter: www.asianometr... Patreon: / asianometry Twitter: / asianometry
My father was one of the students to work on the computer projects first in ITA as an undergraduate and later at Politecnica/USP during his doctorate on the ugly duckling. Today he is retired as a professor emeritus, one of the founding members of the Brazilian computer society and a pioneer in Brazil. Amazing to see this here.
Que coisa bacana de ler! Meu pai na graduação trabalhou um tempo usando o computador da UFRJ. Essas histórias são felizes , mas a parte de nosso país nunca chegar lá na ponta é triste! Mande um abraço para seu pai e um "muito obrigado" pelo trabalho dele pelo Brasil!
@@pedromachado8513 politica vassala de vender matérias primas a troco de bananas e comprar produtos finais e repassar para a população a um preço totalmente inflacionado com carga tributária altissima. Nunca ocorreu uma reforma agrária em nosso país como nos EUA, ou uma industrialização para tornar nosso país independente.
You know what I love most about your channel? The fact that you’re not using intros, background music, transition effects or any other form of flashy stuff. It’s really refreshing to just be able to listen to a well documented and structured story and not having to cope with all that distracting and annoying trash. Apart from being just pleasant, your subscriber growth also proves that it’s just not needed to irritate your audience. Great job!
This guy works a lot... I remember some time ago before subscribing that I was listening more than watching his videos, and all the information was top quality ... and I was so pleased
Very few countries with large arable farming near the equator end up with a highly developed technological society. Not sure of the exact causes but the native subsistence-based communities with little ability to resist exploitation/colonization in most cases is certainly a factor.
@@Rubicola174, It’s a matter pf national security. Look at Russia right now. Their inability to manufacture their own components means they have to rely on smuggling to overcome sanctions, and smuggling has a limited capacity. It’s going to cause then to lose the war that they started. Imagine if the world actually wants to invade Russia right now. Imagine if China or India wants to invade Russia. Russia would get slaughtered.
I was there. I worked for Hewlett Packard in Brazil from 1985 to 1991. The transfer of technology was not done by reverse engineering. It was done by purchase of technology from those who already had done the reverse engineering. There is an opportunity to describe how Brazil became a powerhouse in the creation of local applications based on DBase.
So Brazil missed the point of protecting its industry, which is to buy time to build a competitive counterpart. This can be done through reverse engineering, and then making it cheaper.
*"local applications based on DBase"* I got into dBase myself, and later into Clipper. This programming language, using dBase data files (.dbf, .ntx, etc) was very popular in Brazil and actually remains in use (though no longer as popular of course), having been modernized with new compilers so that it can be used in modern computers in varied OSes (DOS, Windows, Linux, Unix, macOS). The Clipper saga goes on.
@@pedrob3953 Every American company was and is reverse engineering products of competition. It is standard and legal practice. You are no allowed to infringe patents and nothing more.
Brazilians have always had a good reputation for software engineering and coding. The thinking was that they substituted software skills for the high cost and scarcity of hardware (the Soviets and the same reputation for similar reasons). They also have a good reputation for data communications. During their high inflation period during the 1990s, their banking system software became among the most efficient back office operations in the world, purely a result of necessity and highly skilled software engineers.
It's noteworthy that Brazil's banking system surpasses those in most Western countries in terms of technological advancements. Just recently, the Pix payment system-which operates in real-time and supports a wide array of payment methods-registered an impressive 168 million transactions in a single day. This system not only supports recurrent payments such as subscriptions but also accommodates batch operations, allowing for multiple simultaneous transactions. Though the concept of generating change in a digital payment setting might seem esoteric, it's another feature that adds to the system's versatility. Furthermore, Pix is gaining international traction; it's being widely adopted in Argentina and is even making inroads into some American businesses where there is a significant Brazilian presence.
Since you mentioned the ITA, perhaps you will be interested in its creation, its role in the creation of Embraer and the whole Brazilian aeronautical industry.
I'm Brazilian and can confirm you did an amazing investigation work. Believe me, I never saw such good coverage of this subject in any media or TV here in Brazil. But I was aware of almost all companies you talked about (maybe only Elebra I didn't know about). Many of these companies were in fact "joint-venture" from foreign companies (EDISA was created with help from HP, etc). In the middle of 90's many these companies were incorporated by their foreign "mother" or just went bankrupt. There is an USP University museum called ICMC that show a little bit of this history.
Tem um podcast chamado Primeiro Contato que cobre muito bem esses acontecimentos, mas mais a partir da década de 80. Eles fizeram um excelente trabalho, recomendo uma conferida
Man! As a Brazilian Computer Engineering Student with a very high interest in microelectronics, I didn't expect you were going to cover the Brazilian "Computer scenario" in any way, a teacher of mine that worked with IC development for some time sent me your video, hadn't seen it yet. Really glad to see someone explaining a bit of our...little chaos with techonology here. This teacher has a partner that worked at the LSI during the 80's or 70's if I'm not mistaken, one day we sat there, not knowing he had worked with any of that, and just started asking some random questions. Some minutes later he was telling one of the most incredible stories I had ever heard, showing us photos of his when he was younger with his colleagues working on the first brazilian PCs. He made the first ethernet connection between pcs in Brazil, where he had to work only with prototypes due to the fact that...well, there were no more PCs to connect in the country at all! We had a sample of one of the chips designed at LSI, and this teacher told how things were at CEITEC, the complications, political factors, its closing, and decline of the semiconductor scenario here. Unfortunately there is no prospect of really developing this area, but there are MANY extremely talented engineers here with a lot of knowledge in both digital and analog IC design. One of the companies that hire the most here is Chipus in Rio Grande do Sul, where they develop (and export) analog ICs, but usually it doesn't hold their workers for long as companies such as Intel, AMD, Infineon usually make impossible to beat offers, so people usually go abroad, but their work remains very important. Well, very happy to see the video anyway, I hope one day I can enter this industry , and, who knows, influence others to enter too, especially here in Brazil. Keep up the amazing work!
Only truths here. I think it's worth noting that Cadence opened an office in Belo Horizonte and there have been some fabless companies designing chips in Brazil. Let's hope that we who work in the industry can cooperate to develop an environment and policies to expand our native design capabilities and that we are able to retain our talent. Our country and it's people are very hardworking and resourceful. I think asionometry makes us see that failures and underdevelopment are more complicated than one thinks. Plenty "developed" countries have also tried and failed at semiconductors for the most diverse reasons.
The Lua programming language has an interesting origin story that is intertwined with the period when Brazil attempted to protect its computer industry through various government policies. In this context, Lua was developed as a lightweight scripting language to address the specific needs of Brazilian researchers and developers. Although the Brazilian Informatics Policy eventually evolved and relaxed its restrictions on foreign technology, Lua continued to thrive and develop as an open-source project.
Lua is post-dictatorship, different context, but I wouldn't be surprised if some people involved in its development had worked for COBRA and others mentioned.
Which shows the real value was in software, not hardware. That is the crux of the mistake - thinking the big prize was in assembling computers (that were so expensive that only state-onwed companies and banks could buy them).
As an American that has spent over a decade living in Brazil and has a Brazilian wife, I think this is one if Brazil's largest current problems. I think the original intention of keeping foreign goods out of the country was a good one to allow Brazilian companies time to ramp up against a wave of competition, but it quickly just turned into Brazilian protectionism for inferior and costly goods. This has led to one of the largest reasons Brazil fails to meet its economic potential. Its a fine balance between exports and imports as we see the new wave of bringing production back to the US and it's more geographically closer allies, but Brazil has the balance completely backwards. Electronics in Brazil are the most expensive anywhere on the planet and even more so over the last decade as the currency has devaluated. This means that businesses need to spend 2-3x the cost for same electronics and machinery as competition in other countries. Sometimes there are national products that are inferior that you could possibly use but the reality is that most of the time you need to use imported goods that are prohibitively expensive to acquire. Top that off with the some of the highest loan interest rates in the world makes financing the goods even more costly. This means that most businesses are fighting with one hand behind their back when compared to other countries. I think it is fine if Brazil wants to keep high import taxes on goods that don't do a ton for its own economic production, such as luxury clothing brands, furniture, foods, etc. However, for goods that would help Brazilians be more competitive these import taxes need to be lowered. Brazilian university students shouldn't need to pay more that double for the latest laptops or smartphones and businesses should be able to get the best technologies into the hands of their employees at reasonable costs. Brazil will always remain behind because they are either working with inferior technology or struggling with exorbitant costs of acquiring and financing the latest technology especially compared to international competition. Brazil is never ever going to lead any tech sectors in computer hardware production, however, they have lots of talented programers and engineers that could create new industries and goods to export if they had availability to the best tech. This has never been more the case as we move more into 3D printing, robotics, and AI. Three of the industries with the most growth potential over the coming decades but all very dependent on access to the best tech hardware available.. These technologies could help level the playing field for Brazilian industry and quickly match foreign peers for production speed and quality, but without access to the best tech, Brazil will be left even further behind. They will continue to be reliant on exports of commodities to other countries that use the cheap commodities to then create high value goods that are then imported and bought by Brazilians at the highest costs in the world. It's the exact opposite of buy low and sell high. This also leaves Brazil's economy vulnerable to the cyclical nature of commodity prices and currency fluctuations. The government however, is never going to do this. Brazil in general has a hard time collecting taxes internally as businesses and citizens are known to skirt around taxes as much as possible and charging high import taxes on ports they can more easily control is a steady stream of revenue they are never going to relinquish. Also the big companies that do exist have strong lobbies and don't want things to change as it would bring on competition that they don't want. It's unfortunate because Brazil probably has the most potential for economic expansion than any country in the world with the largest abundance of natural resources, fertile agricultural land, fresh water, and great age demographics. Only India probably rivals them in potential due to its size and population but they lack the resources that Brazil has. As the saying goes, Brazil is the country of the future, and always will be.
I think that what you said is correct but it is missing a key factor on the WHY these policies look half assed. There was a major contradiction between sectors that wanted national development, either far right or far left, and the dependent sector that wants the country to be a big farm. During the first of the 1900s the development sector had more power and pushed for much of the big industry that exists today in the country. The dependent sector is mostly the old farmers from colonization and industry owners that are actually from western countries. This sector behaviour is the same as any colonial elite, they want the least manufacturing as possible in their big farm with the lowest wages and intellectual development. Their dream is a neocolony. When you look at Brazil trying to protect an industry but at the same time not going all in to make it work it's a reflection of this conflict. And it was lost. Not only that, but also western elites got offered the most optimal industrial capital export in China. In China they can build anything at a high level with unmatched scale with proper infrastructural planning, long term plans and access to resources from everywhere. Why would you allocate resources to Brazil anymore? It's at most a bit of diversification. As China advanced every other country got less attractive, even developed ones. That's why the de-industrialization has been going on for decades. You lose the internal political battle and who's going to build a research complex in the country to have the best technology by itself? Who has the resources to build an industry to fight these heavy international powerhouses? One of the largest recent political mistakes was that a bunch of people still believed that there was a sector of the elite that wanted to industrialize, so you only needed to offer good credit and they would spend it in machines. Turns out they don't exist, so they took the specially cheap credit to make banks, speculate future market commodities, speculate housing prices and buy already existing infrastructure. It would be one thing if the country was sabotaged, embargoed, attacked and whatever. These things happen and recently happened to Petrobras SIX technology, but a lot is also self inflicted by an elite that got there by being and remaining colonial. They never wanted Brazil to fight in that front in the first place. So when we talk about this protectionism, don't look at importing machines being difficult as a simply bad planned policy that was supposed to protect the industry. It's deliberate. The project is for the country to have the bare minimum for agricultural and mining commodity export and that's it.
I mostly agree with your opinion. The protection against direct import and establish of foreign companies in Brazil had a good cause at beginning. But them quickly became the root of outdated industries and products in all areas. At end the very high taxes imposed by the Brazilian government no only in computers but everything else became one more conviniente way of income of adding to government coffers. Brazilian government could made what China did which was force foreign companies to join partner with local one with technology transfer. But them, we were living the worst days of economic chaos in Brazil. The 1980’s is referred as “The lost decade”. So, with tightly regulated economy by Brazilian government, closed market to imported goods by heavily taxing and chaotic economy with high inflation and stagnation, Brazil didn’t have the cache to attract foreign companies. I graduated of engineering school in Brazil in the late 1980’s. None of my classmates found meaningful engineering job out of school. It took them 3 and some up to 5 years to find jobs in the area. In my case, I decided to leave the country and enroll again in college and get a new degree.
@@truebras o que voce foi fazer depois na gringa? to pensando em fazer engenharia e criar alguma tecnologia tipo a weg mas o brasil me desanima.. O que voce acha? Eu deveria tirar meu cavalinho da chuva e ir pra concurso publico ou medicine? Me adaptar ao Brasil?
Vaza daí o mais rápido possível e vá pra algum lugar onde valorizem o seu conhecimento e vontade de produzir.
Год назад
I'm a student of ITA, and I'm really happy that you mentioned Zezinho! One of the main engineers of Zezinho, Alfred Volkmer (T61) is a teacher at ITA nowadays - an absolute legend. Usually people just slap the Patinho Feio from USP (don't get me wrong, they were rockstars, but Zezinho was a historical mark 10 years earlier and that people tend to forget)
Very interesting. I work with Brazilians down in Jacarei on an aerospace IT team. Even to this day getting even a new Dell server delivered is like pulling teeth, the same with trying to get the PO signed when they see the price tag. All the people I've worked with in IT from there have been outstanding, and this bit of history now shows me why. Thanks!
Wow. Just a few weeks ago I listened to part of this story when attended a lecture of an ex-COBRA engineer who was a guest lecturer at the federal university of Rio where I'm studying comp sci. If you go to the library at NCE (the uni's comp sci research institute) you can still find original manuals for COBRA machines.
Sadly, there is no material from Cobra online. Just trying to search the names of the various languages they developed is nearly an impossible task. Meanwhile I can find detailed information for any of their foreign competitors at Bitsavers, for example. Their local competitors used licensed technology, so the lack of material from them isn't a problem as I can just read the originals instead.
Jesus Christ, go study Portuguese, Cobra means an intelligent person who dedicates himself to a certain subject. In popular terms, cobra can mean Serpente (snake) because it is assumed that the snake was a smart animal as mentioned in the Bible. Snake = serpente (not cobra).
Amazing topic, I just wished you mentioned the vital role Taiwan-Paraguay close diplomatic ties had in facilitating the thriving computer black market in 80s Brazil. In a nutshell, the computer-starved Brazilian economy could find exactly what it needed in the free-trade zone of Cuidad del Este, in the triple Brazil-Paraguay-Argentina border. Ciudad del Este tax-free status means no tariff barriers, and I imagine the close Taiwan-Paraguayan ties made it even easier to get Taiwan-made components of all kinds. Or who knows, the Taiwan-Paraguay relationship can be a topic for a future video.
Then it means computers were not technically smuggled into Brazil if they were procured from a 'free trade zone',or it's possible Brazil did not have a bilateral agreement with Paraguay that covered the activities in that zone.
@@avatardele computers were smuggled directly into every big city in Brazil. I remember the ads in the newspaper for chips and computers that were obviously smuggled. There is a limit of how much each person can buy in Paraguay per trip, and it is a long trip from São Paulo or Rio.
Another big group of players in the brazilian computer market were banks and financial institutions. With a galloping inflation during the 80s and 90s the demand for real time systems interconecting banks and federal regulatory agencies forced the creation of a big specialized segment of companies like Digirede, Procomp, Itautec, Tecban and others. They had to do a lot of R&D (specially in software but a lot of dedicated hardware) because simply there was nothing out there that could be easily copied and adapted to our chaotic economy.
I studied computer engineering at University of Sao Paulo (had so many classes in the "flying saucer" building at 3:10).between 2000 and 2004. I had classes given by a few of the engineers that designed and implemented the Patinho Feio. Also with several ex-engineers from Cobra, Sid, Itautec, Scopus (one of my teachers was a high-ranking executive). That generation was probably the brightest we ever had in Brazil. I left Brazil to the UK some years ago as did so many of my classmates and work colleagues. There is a massive brain drain ongoing in Brazil for the last 10 years or so...
I'm also a Computer Engineer from a Federal University and currently live in the US without even working as an engineer. While I wanted to go back to Brazil, the issue is that almost no company wants to hire a Brazilian, specially if working remotely. If any company is looking for a engineer and don't mind I'm Brazilian I would be down to work for them.
Yes ! ! I've Worked at Scopus for 23 years ! Wilson Ruggiero was my teacher at Poli and my boss at Scopus for long, long time ! Great Person. Great Teacher and Excelent boss !
I´m a Brazillian viewer and always wanted to suggest you to talk about Brazillian technological adventures, but never found anything worthy of even a 5 minute length video, which upseted me. We don´t hear much of these past warriors and seeing you talk about them surely gave me a reason to smile. Brazil has a terrible behavior of kicking off promesing projects just so they can die a few years later. It happened so many times for so many unnecessary reasons, in fields ranging from computers, to cars and even to war machines. The stories you tell on this channel are inspiring to me, and consequently, maybe one day I´ll be featured in one of your videos. Perhaps about a change in the current semiconductor situation around here. Who knows. Obrigado por olhar para o nosso Brasil, meu caro.
Do you really produce cars if you don't have access to the motor designs and patents like what happened to Gurgel? Hell no. Brasil has always remained dependant on other countries technology for its industry. No long term projects like, never. It's an agricultural country and will remain as it is. If you say you study semiconductors, people will give you funny looks
@@ecoista1373 Please check your negativity before you post, this sort of downtrodden "will never amount to anything" attitude is unhealthy. Suggesting helplessness and "why even bother" is deadly. Instead I commend the original commenter for his hopeful and inspired can do attitude. That sort of motivation lets you do good things even when others are negative towards them and challenge them that it's supposedly hopeless.
The majority of Brazilians dream of leaving the country because of the violence and crime, and prefer to have low paying jobs in Portugal. From what I’ve heard it’s like a war zone there, so there’s very few chances industry could develop.
@@cybercat1531 Except people have to eat or get off the country to do something barely related to semiconductors. It's the reality that's not going to change soon. There's no way you can do something about without state action. Agricultural, religious and police related representatives control the congress for the past decade and I tell you they give 0 fucks for the industry, let alone semiconductors
@@ecoista1373 This kinda attitude is exactly the problem. Moan and complain comfortably about how bad it is online, while doing nothing to affect change. A Weakness that will be exploited.
My dad studied automation engeneering at USP during the late 70s and he always mentioned the Ugly ducklying when we talked about old Brazillian computers. He hated that everytime he made a mistake on the program it would take two days to find out the mistake because most computers still used punching cards
When I started working at a large Brazilian financing company (Fininvest) in the early 80s, they were in the process of decommissioning their punch card hardware. It was a little sad to see each of those machines sent to a room where they awaited for disposal. Even then, being only an intern, I was acutely aware that I was witnessing a quantum change in IT technology.
I'm Brazilian. I am pretty amazed at the accuracy of the channel's association of political time, economic policies, nationalism, USA's sphere of influence and so many other details with the topic of the video. I'm an engineer and to me it all seemed very well researched. It is an instant subscription. I took a look at the title of other videos and am looking forward to see this in-depth analysis of other economic stories around the world. :-)
What make me even more confident to watch this channel content. Economics Explained, for example, was a channel I liked. But after I watched one video about Brazil with crazy amount of error I can´t trust your other videos.
Another interesting topic to make a video is the Brazilian telecommunications system. Telebrás system. In the same sense, everything was 100% national and they even developed the first digital telephone switch, presenting it in NY (Tropico systems). I had a teacher in college that worked developing this systems. It was never mass produced due to competitive strategies from other countries and economic difficulties in Brazil at the time.
Very well researched, congratulations! Most sources only mention Itaú, Elebra and SiD in the failed attempt at a reserved market for chips which ended up killing the meager local semiconductor industry instead, but there was a fourth player called Docas de Santos. As its name indicates, was created to manage the docks in the port town of Santos so I never understood why they thought they had a part to play. In at least some versions of the Zezinho story, the students used 1500 transistors made in Brazil by Ibrape (a Philips subsidiary) but their quality was so poor that they first tested them all and sorted them into bins with different gain before actually designing the circuits which could use what they happened to have. Twenty years later any such project would have to use imported transistors, so this one step forward and two steps back trend characterized Brazilian semiconductors since the beginning.
Wasn't expecting my school (University of Sao Paulo Poly - "Poli" and its Electrical Engineering dept) and Patinho Feio here! Although slow since the 90s, we still have a semiconductor lab here that was very active specially during the 70-80s - LATAM's first transistor was made here. The LSD (Lab de Sistemas Digitais) heritage also eventually developed both companies (like Scopus) and systems for the Sao Paulo Subway and Railways (we have some of the old, surplus CRT terminals around the labs here). Great video, as always!
@@yagobueno2785 sim! meio antiquado AFAIK, mas ainda produzimos - inclusive, se nao me engano, tem uma empresa que fabrica paineis solares aqui no BR usando tecnologia desenvolvida no LME (lab de microeletronica) da Poli. Pra vc q quer design de CIs, existe um programa (acho q federal) chamado CI Brasil (um dos meus professores foi diretor do programa por um tempo), e um dos centros eh na Poli Eletrica (o outro eh na UFRGS, acho), da uma pesquisada.
@@yagobueno2785 Todos nos desejamos, infelizmente esse meu sonho deixei para traz 20 anos atras, ainda no mercado de TI mas bem longe do desenvolvimento de CIs
Congrats. As a (two weeks shy of) 55 yo Brazilian IT professional, this was a great recap and a trip down the memory lane :) I personally had a few of those PCs like the Dismac Apple II clone and the Gradiente's XP-800 Expert, a MSX.
Dang, i am Brazilian and had the opportunity to hear of someone who was from ITA about the early attempt to creat a Brazilian computational industry and... Wow im shocked, this is very acurrate!!! And also, thank your for making your brazilian audience so happy! Hahahaha
Nem na universidade contaram essa história. Eu sei que fabricantes como Gurgel que até foram pioneiros em certos aspectos foram negligenciados, assim como a indústria de PCs. Vários países fizeram da engenharia reversa um meio de desenvolver sua industria, o Japão por exemplo em relação a Alemanha. Enfim, bacana ver essa história, além de muito interessante e curiosa, sendo contada por estrangeiros. Porque não contamos isso? Estranho não? Gostei do vídeo!
Very nice report, but I miss the quite unknown fact that Brazil created in 1985 the first Apple Macintosh clone - The Unitron Mac 512 - based on the Fat Mac. It was developed by Unitron, a quite small but very sucessful Apple II clone maker located at Freguesia do Ó in São Paulo that doesn't wanted to follow the herd and enter the (already saturated) IBM PC clone market. Instead the company decided to "remain" 😜 with Apple and successfully replicated Macintosh custom chips thru reverse-engineering, that made the guys from Cuppertino first quite mad and second very scared. That's because of the possibility that Unitron could sell its tecnology to other PC makers in Asia and - from there - flood the global market with cheap Mac copies. Unfortunately the Mac 512 never hit the brazilian market because Apple (backed by the US government) sued Unitron for IP violation (AFAIK their legal team discovered that despite of Unitron's efforts to rewrite the Macintosh firmware from scratch, parts of the original code was still present in the cloned version, probably to finish the product on time for the official presentation.) This litigation halted the launch for so long that the product was obsolete when everyhthing was settled.
Oh absolutely, a video about Brazil history with computer and videogames clones would be amazing. I didn't knew much about cloned computers but with a quick search I found some gold clones like the TK-90X (ZX Spectrum, from all computers they could have cloned!). But also there was, and in some regards still is, a huge internal market for cloned and alternative videogames, from the time of the Telejogo (Pong clone) until even today where we find new versions of the Master System still being produced and sold. There is also a long history of cloned and modified games, like the lots of pirated/converted from one console to another/unlocked Nintendo cartridges (because Nintendo never cared about BR)/bomba patches and all, and also there are the games fully developed in Brazil like Street Fighter II and Mortal Kombat 3 on the Master System.
Apple never sued Unitron (the failure of Sinclair's suit against Microdigital a few years before made them worried about their chances, so they decided to use government to government pressure instead). Instead, SEI didn't approve the project so it was not legal for Unitron to sell it. A store that had a Mac 512 for show actually sold it and Unitron was forced to pay a hefty fine for that.
In all fairness Brazil has a long history of trying very hard to protect most of its tech and manufacturing industries through very high tariffs on imports. It's both a good and a bad thing. Good when companies produce their goods in Brazil, bad when it stymies innovation or promotes counterfeit goods to evade the tariffs.
Clearly a horrible idea for something as complex as computers. that may have been a good idea for the car industry or radios. but with computers you also want 3rd party software and hardware. and sometimes the best stuff is made in other countries.
I'm a senior from Denmark and an English learner and was very surprised, how well you covered offshore wind farms, although you are from the other site of the world. Your vocabulary is fantastic and I learn a lot from your great videos. And you are not using music and other disturbing and irrelevant sounds is superb, because of my bad hearing. You are my favorite RU-vidr - thank you!
Also, people may not know Brazil also have a domestic aviation industry. Even thought these companies are on life supply now days, it still make and export planes.
If you are interested in Brazilian companies of this sector: Itaútec still exists. CCE made computers up until 2012 when it was acquired by Lenovo, and Positivo and Multilaser are still around.
Itautec não existe mais tal como a CCE, hoje ela é uma é uma divisão do Grupo Itaúsa para relacionamento com investidores, ela não é mais uma fabricante de eletrônicos.
13:14 Sinclair was definitely not american. you couldn't get more british than the sinclair brand (Sir Clive Sinclair). it was, however, copied in the US by Timex.
I am very impressed with the accuracy and completeness presented by the content. I even interned at a company protected by the market reserve in 1986. Finally, congratulations to the channel for the quality of the content presented.
Nice job! As a Brazilian I lived this era. I´ve started my career as IT professional on 80´s and I know what was reported here is a really good journalistic job
I belong to the generation that learned to operate Brazilian computers at the company I worked for in the early 1980s. My first personal computer, a Solution 16 - Prologica, was the first Brazilian 16-bit computer. It had two floppy disk readers (there were no HDs back then). In 1982, when I graduated as a Technician in Electronics (high school level), I started looking for a job at Scopus Tecnologia, a company that manufactured computers in São Paulo.
That market reserve held us back about a decade in IT years in terms of technology compared to what the rest of the world was using back then. When I joined the workforce as a teenager in the early 90's, most offices had maybe one or two very overpriced PC-AT 286's (at best) or maybe PC-XTs, running early versions of DOS with ugly amber or green monochrome screens (sometimes 4-colors CGAs if one were lucky) and noisy 80 columns dot-matrix printers doing mostly clerical work. While at home, the only affordable options were the Brazilian clones of successful BASIC-based 8-bit computers such as the ZX Spectrum made by Gradiente and the likes. I distinctly recall that clones of the japanese MSX were particularly popular at the time. Meanwhile, the rest of the world was experiencing rich and intuitive WIMP GUIs with hundreds of colors, mouse, easy to use WYSIWYG productivity software, powerful multimedia capabilities and what have you in affordable kits with the likes of the Amiga and the Atari ST. It took a long time for us to close the gap and catch up.
13:24 - Sinclair is not an american computer. It was developed by Sir Clive Sinclair in UK, and we had clones of the ZX-80, ZX-81 and ZX Spectrum in Brazil as the TK-82, TK-85 and TK-90X, all made by Microdigital. The CP-500 that appears right after is a clone of the TRS-80 (and not what you mentioned).
And don't you forget that Microdigital also sold software in cassete tapes for their TK systems under the name "Microsoft" 😜(wich makes sense if we consider the company name).
Eu sou um engenheiro de software brasileiro. Eu nunca vi uma cobertura tão disso em nenhuma mídia ou TV aqui no Brasil. Sensacional! - I'm a brazilian software engineer. I never saw such good coverage of this subject in any media or TV here in Brazil. Excellent job!
I actually graduated as a computer engineer at the University of São Paulo. The Ugly Duckling (Patinho Feio) is displayed in one of the hallways. João José Neto, one of the developers of the Ugly Duckling, was my teacher. I don't know if he is still alive, since I graduated in 2016. I feel so proud. Thank you for this video
The success about the computer industries is that you had to makes sures the world (consumers) knows about the brand you offers, and had to reel with the sales profits. Indonesia had it too with some their local brand (Advan, Xenom and Axioo's PC's). Brazil had the chance to do that and we support it, let's go for it coming from Indonesia🇮🇩🇧🇷
The whole purpose of protectionism，is to protect domestic industry at the beginning of the development phase，when they are immature and uncompetitive，in the hope that one day domestic industry can become competitive and able to survive without protection. It is never meant to put domestic industry under protection forever. If domestic industry was under protection for many decades already and still not competitive，it's better to just give it up. Because it is a burden on the public，it is the people who is forced to buy these expensive and uncompetitive domestic products.
There is a price to pay in both case. If the nature of the protection is to develop national security independence or public services, the protected industry shouldn't have to be economically competitive. For example, in public transportation we can easily see the service degradation due to the liberalization of state-owned companies (eg. Germany, France) or the mess of a mainly privatized market (UK, Thailand, Japan). Protecting the domestic industry can also be a way to be sure the customer services and inventories remain local and it keeps politics away from multinational lobbying (though the other countries can push economical sanctions to support their own champions, in a classical US way). It also allows to mitigate/stop brain drain and keep the plus-value work inside the national economy.
@@PainterVierax "Protecting the domestic industry can also be a way to be sure the customer services and inventories remain local and it keeps politics away from multinational lobbying" That is such a naive and ignorant statement to make, jesus christ...
Everything else he said is pretty on point tho. Protectionism often is not only about what makes more (if any) money. There are benefits that may be well worth the cost. Assembling fighter jets in china would save the American government a lot of money. But optimizing the balance sheets is just one of many factors in this decision.
@@Zerradable I mean, the alternative is just giving up and allowing strategic industries to be taken over by foreign companies, byu which point you simply won't be able to defend yourself from multinational lobbying at all.
Another esoteric topic I’ve never even thought about, am excited to watch!! My whole family says i am ADDICTED to asianometry videos - they do not know i can stop any time i want: and i just don’t want to stop!!!! My son wants me to throw the ball with him, no son ever has explained how a military coup affects data processing industries 50 year ago!!!! Wife feeling insecurity about my time on youtube; lets talk about NATIONAL SECURITY and its ramifications with the brazilian navy bank!!!! my parents have disowned me
Uh, "Wife feeling insecurity about my time on youtube; lets talk about NATIONAL SECURITY and its ramifications with the brazilian navy bank!!!" - I'm with your wife on this one... :)
Excelente trabalho, parabéns. Após me formar no CEFET/PR Trabalhei na SID de 1982-1994 primeiro na linha de teste do computador de 8 bits (SID3000), depois no desenvolvimento do supermini baseado no Motorola 68040 rodando sistema baseado no Unix V (SID SMX300), e finalmente no projeto do PC, licenciado da IBM (SID300). Para todos os técnicos do setor foi um ótimo período, aprendi muito nessa época, não posso dizer o mesmo para o mercado.
Your research is, without fail, consistently comprehensive, well-organized, and directed toward underreported areas of contemporary technological history (i.e., your reviews are not mildly reworded walk throughs of popular Wikipedia articles). Thank you for your considered and quality contributions to public education on key technological histories of the post-war era.
It's a phenomenal achievement of the Brazillian computer makers to keep up with developments the way they did. The computer technology was moving at incredible pace back then. It must have been frustrating to always be forced to "follow" the lead set by international forces beyond your control, instead of setting your own direction. Very relatable for us Americans right now since we transferred all our technology overseas and are now also followers to China/Taiwan etc. We can't even build basic cars or appliances anymore and are tied hands and feet to imports.
Well... I'm a Brazilian and a big critic of all the affairs the US administration did in the eighties. The Reagan administration forced us to open our markets (through punitive taxes) with verry little countermeasures. There is a great piece on this on the archives of NYT, and it shows some of the arrogance of American industrial titans. The administration at the time (1986) labeled the protectionist measures taken by Brazil as "unreasonable" and a ''burden on U.S. commerce.'' Like if we couldn't mind our own business! There was no diplomatic talk between the two governments; companies from both countries could had collaborated for better integration between their markets, instead America decided on 'free trade' and outsourcing jobs to asia.
@@galdutro with our schizophrenic labor laws and government financing relying on inflation, no, we had no chance integrating our markets. Good for the chinese while it lasted.
@@Zerradable the Chinese easly transitioned from a communist economic system to a capitalist one. To think we couldn't do this is just stray dog mentality! (mind you, we curbed hyperinflation with The Real Plan, which had an unheard-of success in bringing forth a stable and trustworthy currency -- just look at argentina and their failure despite the IMF continuously backing them up. We, on the other hand, had no IMF money; we launched The Real Plan on our own. Even Germany ended its hyperinflationary process only after US loans.)
I'd say the military heavy industries of the past, particularly the tank production one is the most interesting when talking about Brazilian technologies.
Let's not forget Brazilian beach flip-flops, the original Havaianas, I notice hot girls often wear them and that goes a long way towards promoting the brand.
I lived this history as an engineer student and Brazilian microcomputer owner, then as a digital design engineer through the 80s and 90s. The video is thorough and accurate, congrats! A side story: SEI controlled IBM through import quotas. IBM made 4381 low end mainframes and 3278 video terminals in Brazil. It wasn’t allowed to introduce new terminal models, because they were under Brazilian protection laws, but it could keep on making the old model. Brazilian clones also appeared for the IBM terminals. Aiming to produce more with the import quota it had, IBM created a Brazilian design center that redesigned the 3278, partially using Brazilian components, with modern CMOS technology, but keeping the external look and feel. The design center kept making other products for the external markets, including one of the world’s first WiFi network gear, using IBM’s own protocol.
My dad was a software engineer from 1973 to 2009, working mostly on government systems so he told me such stories, and you did your research really well, good to know that someone told such story in english
What a knowledgeable introduction! It is humbling to find out just how little I knew about the historical scenario of my own country's computer industry.
It's really refreshing to see an outsider's vision about Brazilian computer industry story. This is a somewhat poralizing topic here, and the debate rarely goes beyond being for or against something. Your video is probably the best thing I have ever seen on the topic!
The US did put Brazil on a blacklist due to our nuclear industry that restricted access to some US technology exports. Similar issues happened with the computing industry. It's true that the logic of the protectionist model of Brazil was more inward looking than in East Asia and that is an "original sin" in many cases. But it's also a political issue that East Asia was favored and their technological development supported by the US while here they tried to prevent it at every step until they got what they desired
Meanwhile today Israel is negotiating (says the authoritative Washington Post) with Saudi Arabia, and behind the scenes with the USA, to transfer civilian nuclear technology to the Saudis, in exchange for official recognition of Israel. Something tells me this might go badly...recall not only do Saudis hate the citizens of Israel, but you have the Shiite vs Sunni conflict and nuclear power Iran is Shiite.
Mas é claro que eles foram favorecidos, aqui com Vargas e CLT ninguém iria querer transferir tecnologia ou colocar fábricas. é insano não culpar o socialismo e protecionismo pelos males do Brazil. Uma 'teoria econômica' de 200 anos é vista como ponta de linha é sacanagem colega. Não adianta defender sua ideologia.
Your video thumbnails have legible fonts, good contrast, and they don't ask a dumb click bait question. Advertisers won't stand for that kind of quality and honesty to get eyeballs.
One of my father friends was Brigadier General Tercio Pacitti, he introduced the computer engineer course on ITA and is considered one of the precursors of it in Brazil, in one of his books about the history of computers here,he tell the history of the time the airforce was trying to buy a new IBM mainframe but because the government doesn't permitted they found a work around they bought a armored vehicle and the Mainframe was a necessary component to make it work.
BRAVO! Really BRAVO! I've lived 27 years in Brazil, in the times mentioned and my father worked for IBM.... REMARQUABLE exposé!!! Very complete, very precise and doing something others overlook, talking a bit of the governments influence on these matters. Bravissimo ! IBM, Ford, GM and others all fronted for intelligence agents that did what was necessary for the american machines to prevail (as with all else).The lack of vision, ignorance and the corruption of the ruling class , the brazilian "pseudo elites" is staggering. A real shame since there is talent there. Brazil is the conutry of the future; and it will always be!
Your comment is so precise. I study Information Systems in a Brazilian University and I am tired of having world class teachers and nowhere to apply the knowledge here. My Computer Architecture II teacher would teach us about the ins and outs of all sorts of instruction scheduling algorithms, about esoteric architectures like systolic arrays, or how TTA is a generalization of VLIW architecture. And this for an Information Systems bachelor, not even a Computer Science bachelor which has much more prestige and I presume where the best teachers are. And all work I find here is for web development and data analysis. Such a disparity between the quality of the teachers and courses and what the average job requires of me.
You know, I'm majoring in computer engineering and I didn't know most of this. At most someone will make a remark about how some guys from PUC Rio created the Lua language but that's about it. I know some teachers who would love this video and might spread it around so I'll show it to 'em, more people need to learn the history of our field.
Really loved the video, pretty informative. I have a Itautec from 2008 i still keep around, and had no idea the company that made it had so much history behind it.
This is a precious documentary -- a quite exact one. Thank you. I will look for a similar document about India preferably made by yours. Brasil (some native Brazilian) RHH
Quick correction: The Sinclair was a UK company, not US Nice video, I live in Brazil, and lived through the computer clone period, where we had clones for ZX Spectrum, TSR-80, MSXs It was an interesting period, and I know several companies producing clones and other brazillian computers would die, opening imports was the right move (maybe one of the few good things Collor did at the time) I do feel sorry for some companies, but to be fair, it is survival of the fittest, and if we still had the import embargo, maybe we would still be in the computer middle ages while other countries would not...
After all, it's a colony of another colony. The economic elite here have never cared about their citizens, they don't even consider themselves Brazilians.
Great! There is a book with part of the history that I didn't see here. It is called "o crime de prometeus" or "the prometeus crime" the history of computer in brasil.
Jon, @Asianometry, you're a hellovver researcher and presenter! What do you do for your day job? Each and every video feels like you've been working in each and every mentioned organisation for 20 years or more. like the tour guide, CEO, insider trader, press and media... in everything you mention. how do you do it??? you're amazing. one question, why do news letters? i would have thought people prefer watch/hear your presentations than read? or is it that newsletters are for the high brow commuters?
I'm almost 50's now. Near to my house in in Rio at 80's I could see a COBRA factory every day this gave me ideas... So I became a Network engineer in 2000 at the moment I work for the biggest data centre in Australia.
Interesting. A ZX-Spectrum was chosen in my room. In Denmark we went a similar route as many other countries and I liked a thing called "Partner" and I could help with IBM issues in a hospital. It bored me somehow because I could make games and I landed on a typing level. With some new friends and another industry I felt better for years. I tinker with micro controllers and electronics now for fun.
Fantastic video, thanks for sharing! Back in 1988, my dad purchased a Cobra 210, featured at 13:02 in the video. That machine was my introduction to the world of computing. It was love at first sight, I was amazed by that wonderful machine. On it, I learned BASIC programming and soon realized that I wanted to spend my lifetime in this field. That experience is why I'm a software engineer today.
Greetings from Brazil! Thanks for this great video! Very enlightening to see the history in more detail, we always knew from history books about the protectionist era but this so so much more! Thanks!
As a former student at CEFET - MG, in the early 1980's saw two professors of Electrical Engineering, trying to develop a small mainframe computer, one of them was Mr. Weissman and they were tinkering with all kinds of circuitries, did not know if they programmed the prototype to be used in that school or was a project of Professor Poluceno. The reality in those years the government of BR, always tried to protect local production of manufactured goods, whether: semiconductors, TV sets or parts / accessories for the automobile industry, they always restricted the investment or joint ventures that the government at least have 50 % of the shares or they required 50% of ' nationalization' of things made in there.
About development in Brazil by banks, they had their own companies because economy system was broke and with high inflation. With bank automation they manage to control everything and earn more money, specially doing arbitration. They kept this companies developing hardware for a long time, like Itautec from private Itaú bank (BB is the state bank founded by Dom João king of Portugal). Because of the difficulties to make business and messed up economy our bank system never stopped to evolve and today, it is easy to use, automated and cheap. My city was the first to have ATM machines, just some years after UK, internet banking was a reality in the early years of internet, digital transactions were standard and available since the early 2000.....
Itautec actually managed to last until 2013 and their pcs were actually really well built though their prices were not that competitive compared to a Dell or a HP. Nowdays the only major brazilian player in the market is Positivo but they focus more in building really cheap laptops with celerons and stuff like that so to be a cheaper option then a foreign computer
They tell about that story in brazilian public universities computer courses. People who worked on developing those computers, today are elderly professors. But they say it was US pressure that closed the brazilian companies because of intellectual property infringement. They never tells that the problem was closing the market, lagging behind by avoiding international cooperation in the production chain and when the market finally opened, consumers went for the more developed and cheaper foreign products, just like what happened with eastern europe in the end of the soviet union regime.
But this whole "people buying cheaper and more developed products from foreign countries" (because of the market presence of such companies) and "avoiding international cooperation" (to not have dependence on them) are exactly two outside pressures exerted. Japan also did this to US, then China did it to both. Funnily enough, nowadays US is doubling down on protectionism against China and to move away from dependence in Taiwan (also the EU is doing the same).
@@arthurdefreitaseprecht2648 The pressure they told us the US made against brazil was direct threats against the country as a whole. They never meant it was pressure from market competition. I have asked what kind of pressure was that exactly but my professor said he could not answer exactly because it was kept between government leaders. Meaning he understood it in the form of sanctions, like the one applied to cuba, which is usually believed by many, in brazil, to be that sole cause of cuba's whole economy situation. When in reality, as the video said, the US only threatened to increase import tariffs over brazilian products, because brazil had already prohibited US goods first.
Great, great job! Especially when the subject took place before the internet and all in portuguese. Your investigative work was very comprehensive and captured very well what happened. I've lived this story. In the 80's, I worked in a brazilian company called POLIMAX. We manufactured POLI 201 and POLI 301 minicomputers in WP and DP versions (word process and data process - yes, one model for each activity). Later, the company produced Apple II clones, with an imported motherboard.
@@gilsuperdesenhista That should be due to the author being from an anglophone country and video made in english language. Certainly this video was not intended to brazilian audiences 😀
@@AlexandrePansan Pra mim passa uma sensação de tranquilidade. Tipo "se você Caio, acha que nós falamos tudo errado, veja os norte-americanos e ingleses".
Manaus has computer manufacturing even today if I’m not mistaken. They have very protectionist policies in general be it cars, video game consoles, computers and more. But mostly it just means they assemble the parts there which provides factory workers jobs but the main profits are made elsewhere.
Great video! You are reading my mind, i was thinking it would be cool if Asianometry made a video about brazilian chip industry, even now when CEITEC, a state chip fab, liquidation has been canceled, one of bolsonaros imbecility acts was to liquidate it, the state company was not profitable yet, with projection of rentability between 2025 and 2029, It had R$160 milion loss in 2021, if you think is nealry nothing for the brazilian governament to actually have a functional fab. The company produced some products like chips to track livestock, considering there is more cattle than people in brazil it was a good product with a lot of customers. That said, I don't think that brazil will produce large chip with top lithography like ASML or china, but if we had one to make chips similar to stm32, esp32, then move to low end cpu like raspberry pi like to supply PLC companies like Altus and auto industry, we would not have had our auto industry stopped due to the chip shortage in the pandemic. I have been seen some news about the Open Chip Community could you talk about it?
*Virtually Brazil still has a closed market, 93% tax in the case of simplified direct imports (aliexpress, newegg etc)* That's right, you didn't read it wrong: 92/93% tax, there is the exotic system of tax on top of tax, tax on delivery fee, fee for customs "redemption", etc. In the case of imports by companies, it is around 36%, 55%, the sky is the limit, in addition to all the bureaucracy (which worsens the so-called "Brazil cost"). There are still residual market reserve laws (used to this day by national industries to make foreign competition unfeasible). Another aggravating factor is that Brazil is in Mercosur (regional intergovernmental organization), which makes the import system complex and has rules that imply acceptance by several countries to enter into certain international agreements. Even so, Brazil has an interesting IT market, very focused on services and development, large technological centers such as São Paulo, Florianopolis, etc., large Startups and Unicorns, exports technology, with emphasis on the banking area *(6 thousand percent inflation awakens creativity)* Brazil today exports a lot of qualified labor and engineers to the world.
@@flavioc5389Engraçado q quando o todo poderoso Paulo Guedes tava de ministro da economia ele n mexeu 1 palha pra mudar isso, e depois é o L o problema. Ele é parte do problema, mas tem q dizer pra fazer o B, o FHC...
Yeah, at least for individuals the tax is completely absurd and for sure stiffles innovation. For companies it is in a more reasonable bracket because it is meant to reduce imports (so we don't get commercial debts and end up as Argentina). But for sure if they had a more focused strategy to incentivize industries, like lowering import tax for industrial equipment, everybody would benefit in the end by the growing industry and innovation. The problem is, the Brazilian government was never interested in serving the Brazilian people. It serves the rich people (basically people in charge of commodity exports, namely agroindustries and mining, and big banks) and for those it is very convenient that the country has a shitty industry (industrial sector normally pulls the salary average up, and by needing more educated workforces, also pulls the average education of the population up, making the people harder to keep under control). It is a win-win for those who control the country effectively, but very unfortunate for us, the people.
I'm a student of ITA and congratulations, you did a great job explaining its pioneering role in technology in the 50s and 60s. At the same time it makes me angry. ITA is now only a shadow of its former self, when I studied there the only chance of a tech job was to go to internet companies, most students though went to sales jobs in banks or became management consulting. In the last few years even this has become difficult. In fact ITA is the only engineering institute in the entire country where the number of students doing the admissions test has not fallen drastically. Let's see how long that lasts... Anyway, that's the problem of doing technology in Brazil. The country has potential, but it simply is too far behind from the rest of the world, so shady bureaucrats can do shady deals with foreign countries and take complete control of the tech industry. It's starting to change, but it might take several decades...
@@spacefuture-zo5xn Fazer engenharia pra empreender definitivamente não é besteira. No entanto, você tem que saber as características dos projetos em engenharia pra não fazer besteira. O fato é que projetos de engenharia são gigantes. Isso faz sentido quando você pensa que é muito mais eficiente fazer um aeroporto enorme que suporta a populaćão de uma cidade inteira, ou construir um prédio grande para várias famílias em vez de coisas pequenas. Por causa disso, se for fazer engenharia, tem que ir fundo e entender regulamentaćões governamentais, como financiar projetos e como desenvolver projetos de larga escala. Se não fizer isso, tem zero chance da empresa dar certo, e dependendo da área é até ilegal você abrir uma empresa de engenharia que não satisfaz alguns critérios básicos. O problema é que o pessoal vai pro curso achando que qualquer coisa que eles abrirem o pessoal vai querer comprar, e tá menos interessado ainda de saber como os projetos grandes funcionam. Posso dar o meu exemplo. Fiz engenharia de computaćão na época que era o patinho feio das engenharias e hoje estou na Alemanha. Trabalhei em instituićões financeiras e mesmo com a crise atual, tem empresas de telecomunicaćão grandes me chamando pra trabalhar. Então que tem como arranjar emprego claramente tem. Se algum dia eu abrir uma empresa, excelente, mas não é necessário. Não tem resposta certa pra sua pergunta. Se quiser fazer medicina ou concurso público, são carreiras boas também. Agora tem que pensar porque vai tomar essa decisão. Se tá difícil na engenharia, pode estar difícil nas outras áreas também. Você sabe as regulamentaćões e o tanto de curso que um médico tem que fazer pra abrir uma clínica? Você sabe que as carreiras com altos salários no funcionalismo público podem exigir que você mude pro norte do país, e que o tempo de promoćão é bem mais lento que na iniciativa privada? Tudo isso são coisas que tem que considerar, e se analisar e valer a pena, ótimo, mas se for só porque papai e mamãe acha bonito sem saber nada, quem vai se ferrar é você do mesmo jeito. Digo isso porque algo similar aconteceu com meus colegas de turma uns oito anos atrás. Acharam que engenharia não dava retorno, e foram pra banco, consultoria, etc, e não deram certo nessas profissões também.
@@felipelopes3171 meus pais querem que eu faça medicina, eu tambem nao acho uma ideia ruim visto o cenario de outras profissões, concurso publico tambem não é uma má ideia, mas eu quero ficar rico de verdade. Quero empreender, criar algo novo, estava pensando em engenharia elétrica, a WEG me inspirou, mas acho que estou viajando porque todo mundo que eu falo, comentam que precisaria de muita grana pra começar algo assim, criar algum produto e tal.. Medicina eu conseguiria juntar grana do zero e concurso também, mas não vejo tanta graça e não seria o tamanho que eu sonhei. Também não sei se a WEG acertou no timing, hoje fabricar motor elétrico deve ser muito mais complicado. Aí eu fico naquela, será que tem outra coisa pra criar? Falam pra olhar pra nicho, será que tem algum nicho pra eu aproveitar? Tanta dúvida, será que não seria mais fácil eu me render ao Brasil, ir atrás de profissões tradicionais, cargos no serviço publico e me aquietar? Será que eu não deveria garantir o meu salário e depois pensar em tentar algo novo? Mas será que terei pique? São coisas que passam pela minha cabeça e não estou conseguindo chegar a uma decisão
