Strela's speed was 2000 operations per second. Its floating-point arithmetic was based on 43-bit floating point words, with a signed 35-bit mantissa and a signed 6-bit exponent.
While Yuri Bazilevsky was officially Strela's chief designer, Bashir Rameyev, who developed the project prior to Bazilevsky's appointment, could be considered its main inventor.[3][1] Strela was constructed at the Special Design Bureau 245 (Argon R&D Institute since 1986) in Moscow.
Strelas were manufactured by the Moscow Plant of Computing-Analytical Machines (счетно-аналитических машин) during 1953–1957; 7 copies were manufactured. They were installed in the Computing Centre of the USSR Academy of Sciences, Keldysh Institute of Applied Mathematics, Moscow State University, and in computing centres of some ministries related to defense and economic planning.
In 1954, the designers of Strela were awarded the Stalin Prize of 1st degree (Bashir Rameyev, Yu. Bazilevsky, V. Alexandrov, D. Zhuchkov, I. Lygin, G. Markov, B. Melnikov, G. Prokudayev, N. Trubnikov, A. Tsygankin, Yu. Shcherbakov, L. Larionova).
The impetus for the development of Strela was a BBC broadcast heard by Bashir Rameyev about the American development of ENIAC.[4]
^Georg Trogemann, Alexander Yuryevich Nitussov, Wolfgang Ernst (ed.) Computing in Russia: the history of computer devices and information technology revealed, Translated by Alexander Yuryevich Nitussov, Vieweg+Teubner Verlag, 2001. ISBN3-528-05757-2, pg. 84
^Борис Николаевич Малиновский. (1995). История Вычислительной Техники в Лицах. Киев: Фирма “Кит”, ПТОО А.С.К., стр. 251