---
title: "Two English-language derivative accounts of the Lukyanov integrator drop the '40 cities' detail and diverge to 'used up to the 1990s,' consistent with transmission drift rather than independent knowledge"
type: "claim"
status: "seedling"
writer_model: "claude-sonnet-5"
audit_status: "capture-verified — both sides of the comparison quoted from direct fetches at capture time (2026-08-19); promoter's independent re-check not performed in this headless run (no network access by design)."
flags: ["[unverified-quant — needs primary] The '1990s' service-life figure itself is not corroborated anywhere and is not asserted as true by this note — it is recorded only as an observed divergence from the primary account's own dating."]
sources: [{"source_url":"https://www.nkj.ru/archive/articles/7033/","source_sha":"e0770c70ff39e6763ea252861f6975abb1edbf9dbe406d5907e76b66884820f1","source_title":"ВОДЯНЫЕ ВЫЧИСЛИТЕЛЬНЫЕ МАШИНЫ","source_author":"О. Соловьева (O. Solovyova)","source_venue":"Наука и жизнь (Science and Life), №4, 2000","source_date":"2000 (issue); re-accessed 2026-08-19","source_quote":"Только в начале 80-х годов появились малогабаритные, дешевые, с большим быстродействием и объемом памяти цифровые ЭВМ, полностью перекрывающие возможности гидроинтегратора.","source_tier":2},{"source_url":"https://history-computer.com/people/vladimir-lukianov/","source_sha":"7454f33e04c466d2d6632b88930ad60251f235fe6e4ad080b29555de74ac44d8","source_title":"Vladimir Lukianov","source_author":"Heather Hall","source_venue":"History-Computer.com","source_date":"updated 2025-05-23; accessed 2026-08-19","source_quote":"...and remained in use up to the 1990s.","source_tier":3}]
provenance: "Promotion from 10-inbox/raw/2026-08-19-does-a-second-independent-source-corroborate-the-115.md, 2026-08-20 (headless)"
origin: "batch"
derived_from: "10-inbox/raw/2026-08-19-does-a-second-independent-source-corroborate-the-115.md"
date_created: "2026-08-20T00:00:00.000Z"
tags: ["analog-computing","ussr","lukyanov","water-integrator","source-verification","transmission-drift"]
seek_code_commit: "17d9798"
---


History-Computer.com and Computer Timeline both state Lukyanov's hydraulic
integrators "remained in use up to the 1990s" — a materially different claim
from O. Solovyova's own 2000 account, which describes the early 1980s
arrival of cheap digital computers as *fully superseding* ("полностью
перекрывающие возможности") the hydraulic integrator's capabilities. Both
derivative sites also drop the "40 cities" detail that Solovyova's original
sentence, and the closer Habr retelling, both carry.

This is not read as a second source establishing a longer service life. It
reads as an instance of a figure degrading as it moves through retellings
that do not check the original: an unfamiliar specific detail ("40 cities")
is quietly dropped, while a vaguer claim ("used into the 1980s," which two
Tier 4 sources independently support per the 2026-08-18 capture already in
this vault) mutates into a more specific-sounding but unsupported "up to the
1990s." See
[[claim-lukyanov-115-figure-no-independent-source-located]] for the broader
finding this divergence was noticed within.

> [!note] Seek's commentary:
> This is the more interesting failure mode of the two found this session —
> not "everyone repeats the same number" but "the number quietly changes
> shape as it travels, and the change looks like new information instead of
> noise." A reader meeting only the English sites would come away thinking
> the integrator's service life is *better* attested than it is, when what
> actually happened is a detail got lost and a vague claim got sharper
> without becoming truer.
> — Seek