[prezk]

No, they disassembled German optics industry plants in 1945, moved them to the Soviet Union and started cranking out great cameras based on German designs. I've heard that some Soviet cameras had Leica labeled parts inside.

Stuff like that happened repeatedly: GAZ Chaika was a copy of Packard; SM-1 computer was a copy of PDP 11/34; Tu-144 looked just like Concorde, etc. etc.

[hapless]

Chaika was not a copy of a Packard. (They certainly admired the Packard bodywork, but Soviet industry was in no way ready to clone a Packard sedan)

Tu-144 was not a copy of the Concorde. (Convergent evolution is not the same as copying a design!)

The Soviets did clone a lot of DEC gear but I don't think SM-1, specifically, was a DEC clone. (In this lastmost case, the Soviets were left cloning computer equipment because it was forbidden to export to COMECON states)

[prezk]

Sorry, SM-4 not SM-1, was a full emulation of 11/40, with UNIBUS, and all. There were DEC copyright strings latent in some system files. It was a pretty good copy, but quite unreliable, and the reason was quite pedestrian---the connectors! It was a good lesson on how the entire technology chain needs to be high quality for the final product to work well.

Another example I forgot: the first Soviet nuke was directly copied from the stolen Fat Man design. Of course later they did novel stuff, especially the fusion designs of Sacharov et al.

It is well known that KGB got hold of the Concorde blueprints, so yeah, not a direct copy but certainly a lot of influence in that design. Again. the details like engine performance made the difference: apparently Tu144 had to continuously use afterburners to stay supersonic. It was also quite unreliable---I've heard that towards its end of life it was just flying cargo and airmail.

[hapless]

The Concorde and the Tupolev both relied on afterburners, because they operated under similar design constraints -- the "western" jet engines in the Concorde were not that much better than what Soviet design bureaus could produce.

The Concorde was much smaller, and lacked one of the major innovations of the Tu-144 -- forward flap canards to improve handling on a larger jet.

Probably for the better. The Tupolev killed a lot of its passengers, and it was almost immediately withdrawn from service after the first few incidents. The Concorde, a simpler and smaller design, served for decades.

[panick21_]

The Americans "hold my beer" and then later "you know what, fuck this". Classic example of bad choice, good choice. Overall the arguable made out the best with this. Boeing instead focus on 747 and commercial planes airlines actually wanted and damn near became a global monopoly.

[freefaler]

Tu-144 was built because of concorde, but it wasnt' a copy. It was reimplementation of a shared idea. It's not like Tu-4 and B-29, which was a copy.

[totierne2]

Swan and b1.. which came 1st...