From Robotron to Poly-Play: Computers and Video Games in the GDR

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The Playful East: A Piece of GDR History

Exciting and entertaining expert knowledge – for far more than just Ostalgics, computer freaks and gaming fans.

Technology and planned economy: The GDR as an electronics manufacturer

Robotron, Microelectronics Erfurt, Electronic Components Teltow - a good half dozen factories, each with tens of thousands of employees, manufactured computers, components and accessories. The GDR was by no means an electronic desert. Tackled by a planned economy, in 1964 there was a "Program for the Development, Introduction and Implementation of Machine Data Processing". After a lot of ideological confusion, in 1977 an SED plenum ordered the "accelerated development, production and application of microelectronics".

Progress and Challenges of GDR Microelectronics

Experts in business and politics knew very well that microelectronics was a key to technological progress and exports, and they pursued this goal with high investments. Nevertheless, the GDR lagged behind the world standard for several years. The products were too expensive and could not be produced in the necessary quantities. Nevertheless, the list of calculators, educational computers, game consoles, printers, and chess computers made in the GDR is long. In this book, René Meyer describes what was invented and produced and finally reached the companies, what devices found their way into households, and what creative minds in the young computer scene developed.

About the author: René Meyer

René Meyer , born in Leipzig in 1970, was addicted to computers as a schoolboy in the GDR. Since the early 1990s he has worked as a freelance journalist. He is the author of more than sixty specialist books. His subjects revolve around films, computers and video games. A world-class collection has emerged from his work archive: home computers and game consoles from five decades, including many devices from the GDR. It is regularly exhibited as the "House of Computer Games" at trade fairs and festivals, in universities and museums.

product information

• 288 pages
• 12.5 x 21 cm, paperback
• With numerous color illustrations
• Verlag Das Neue Berlin, an imprint of the Eulenspiegel publishing group
• ISBN: 978-3-360-02761-0