
Konrad Zuse: Nearly the German Turing - nkurz
http://www.linuxvoice.com/konrad-zuse-nearly-the-german-turing-5/
======
l33tbro
Zuse is the nerd's nerd. Not only did he build the first programmable
computer, he also was the first dude to grok digital physics and the idea that
the universe may be a computer.

Zuse's book 'Calculating Space' was written in the 60s, years before Fredkin
et al. People thought he was insane. Consequently, he thought his intellectual
life was over and actually went into startups later in life.

Today, his ideas about the universe being computation are very trendy. Before
his death, he was invited out to MIT and shown some love for his pioneering
work.

------
Animats
Zuse was way ahead. He had working programmability by 1938. Atanasoff in the
US got close, but didn't have general programmability. None of the WWII
cryptanalysis machines were general purpose computers. Their modern
counterpart is a Bitcoin ASIC.

None of those machines put the program in main memory. Memory was a huge
problem in the early days. Paper tape and punched cards were slow. Everything
else was expensive per bit and hard to address. Atanasoff had a drum of
capacitors, but it required a discrete capacitor for each bit and rotating
electrical contacts. Tauschek in Austria invented the magnetic drum in 1932,
but it wasn't used for computing until after WWII. The big bottleneck in
computing for a long time was simply that there was nothing like RAM - there
were no random access memory devices.

There were lots of special purpose machines before computers. Much early work
went into electronic multiplication, which was really slow mechanically. IBM
introduced the IBM 603 Electronic Multiplier in 1946, which was the first
electronic digital computing device product. I/O was punched cards, but the
multiplier was tubes. There's a long history of mechanical multipliers, going
back to Leibniz and ending with the IBM 602A. My favorite is the McClure
Multiplying Punch, which had a table-driven mechanical multiplier for
pounds/shillings/pence amounts. The ENIAC was a lot of multipliers and adders
programmed with huge plugboards, but didn't store programs in memory.

Von Neumann put all the pieces together in 1945 in the "Report on the EDVAC"
\- general purpose, branching, program and data in main memory, binary,
external I/O devices.[1]. He saw that memory was the limitation on general
purpose computing, as did others. He wanted 250K bits of memory in the EDVAC.
He only got 44K; the mercury tank delay line approach didn't offer much
capacity. Von Neumann proposed a CRT memory, the first true random access
memory device, which was made to work at the University of Manchester in 1946
as the Williams tube. That technology powered several early machines,
including the IBM 701 and the UNIVAC 1103, and competed with delay lines until
magnetic core memory started working. Both Williams tubes and mercury tanks
were dead-end memory technologies, but they worked well enough to get
something done.

Turing was involved with the ACE effort in the UK, but it was under-funded.
Pilot ACE only had 4K bits of memory and wasn't running until 1950.

[1]
[https://archive.org/stream/firstdraftofrepo00vonn](https://archive.org/stream/firstdraftofrepo00vonn)

~~~
sebastos
We've come to talk about the Von Neumann architecture, but the information
contained in his report on the EDVAC was largely lifted from the work of John
Mauchly and Presper Eckert. Von Neumann's contribution was the relatively
pedestrian task of translating their findings into mathematical language. He
inappropriately put it into the public domain without attribution
simultaneously diminishing their place in history while unjustly cementing
his. Not to mention, he destroyed their chances of earning a patent. It's a
real shame that we tend to gloss over this nowadays for expedience's sake.

~~~
rootbear
For more on this, I recommend "Eniac: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the
World's First Computer" by Scott McCartney. I read it a few years ago and
found it fascinating. I don't remember how much it gets into Zuse, but it has
a lot about the Eniac vs Atanasoff battle, and von Neumann and the Preliminary
Report on EDVAC. These things are never black and white. All of these people
did valuable work.

------
hyperion2010
I remember going to the Deutsches Technikmuseum in Berlin. They had an amazing
exhibit on the development of mechanical computers from automated looms and
the origin of punch cards which were used in automated stitching machines.
They had a model of the Z1. I have never encounter another presentation of the
development of technology that made progress seem so orderly and inevitable
(obviously massive hindsight bias).

The Z1 was absolutely incredible and it really drove home the point that
switches are switches, regardless of whether they are implemented as a
transistor or a metal lever.

~~~
exDM69
I visited that exhibit in Berlin too. There was two or three Zuse computers on
display as well as a bunch of other early European computers. It was a very
nice exhibit.

It was particularly enlightening to see the various technologies being used,
today all computers are made of silicon chips, but the exhibit had electro-
mechanical, electro magnetic (memory), vacuum tube and solid state computers
on display.

I don't know if it is a touring exhibit or is it still in Berlin, but I
recommend anyone to visit that.

~~~
schoen
It was in Berlin at the new year, and didn't look like it was going anywhere.
:-) Konrad Zuse's son is a retired computer science professor who built one of
the replicas in the exhibit, and still sometimes lectures on it and
demonstrates it.

[http://www.horst-zuse.homepage.t-online.de/](http://www.horst-
zuse.homepage.t-online.de/)

------
Sidnicious
I saw Konrad Zuse’s son, Horst Zuse, give a presentation on the history of
these computers at the Deutsches Technikmuseum in Berlin. It was fascinating
(this article covers the same information). He's currently building a Z3 out
of modern parts, out on the museum floor. I took some pictures and video of
the Z1 replica and the in-progress Z3:

[http://imgur.com/a/effAn](http://imgur.com/a/effAn)

[https://vid.me/FUQL](https://vid.me/FUQL)

------
weinzierl
The article has only an image of the Z4 in Munich. I find the reconstruction
of the Z1, which is in museum in Berlin, much more interesting.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article[1]:

    
    
        Construction of the Z1 was privately financed. Zuse got money from his 
        parents, his sister Lieselotte, some students of the fraternity AV Motiv 
        (cf. Helmut Schreyer) and Kurt Pannke (a calculating machines manufacturer 
        in Berlin) to do so.
    
    
        Zuse constructed the Z1 in his parents' apartment; in fact, he was allowed 
        to use the bathroom for his construction. In 1936, Zuse quit his job in 
        airplane construction in order to build the Z1.
    
    
        Zuse used thin metal sheets to construct his machine. There were no relays 
        in it. The only electrical unit was an electric motor to give the clock 
        frequency of 1 Hz (cycle per second) to the machine.
    
    
        The machine was never very reliable in operation due to the precise 
        synchronization required to avoid undue stresses on the mechanical parts.
    

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z1_%28computer%29](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z1_%28computer%29)

~~~
scriptproof
> The article has only an image of the Z4 in Munich. And it is an image of the
> Z3 if one looks closer at the description on the left.

------
StephenFalken
Some trivia from Wikipedia [0]:

    
    
      The movie Tron: Legacy, which revolves around a world inside a computer system, 
      features a character named Zuse [1], presumably in honour of Konrad Zuse.
    

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse#Zuse_Year_2010](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse#Zuse_Year_2010)

[1]
[http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0209988/?ref_=tt_cl_t7](http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0209988/?ref_=tt_cl_t7)

~~~
StephenFalken
Some years before his death, Konrad Zuse wrote a book about his long and
interesting life called "Der Computer - Mein Lebenswerk", which was later
translated to an English version titled as "The Computer - My Life".

~~~
alexanderpf
Lebenswerk means life's work, not life.

------
neolefty
Zuse's independent development of ideas that paralleled other early computer
scientists' makes me wonder how much of our modern computer science (Von
Neumann, Lambdas, clocks, registers, and all) was inevitable discoveries and
how much was shaped by our pioneers.

If we did it all over again, but with different people, would we end up with
something similar, or something very different? Would we have digital,
basically serial computer cores with layers of memory around them? Would our
languages be like assembler and C and Lisp?

Or are there potentially very different but equally practical alternatives out
there?

------
ChuckMcM
If there ever it a tour of machines that moved worlds, I would recommend the
following:

Z1 - DT museum

Difference Engine - British Science museum

Bombe - Bletchly Park

Harrison's H1 - Greenwich Observatory

~~~
AceJohnny2
There's also a Difference Engine at the Computer History Museum in Mountain
View. A block or two down from Google.

The interesting thing about the Difference Engine was that it was Babbage's
unrealized design. It wasn't built until the early 2000s, funded by HN
favourite Nathan Myhrvold. He funded one for the British Museum, another one
for himself. The one at the Computer History Museum is Myhrvold's own, on
loan.

~~~
rootbear
Almost. Myhrvold provided funds for the British Museum to complete their copy,
and build him a complete machine. From Wikipedia:

"After the Science Museum in London successfully built the computing section
of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine #2 in 1991, Myhrvold funded the
construction of the output section, which performs both printing and
stereotyping of calculated results. He also commissioned the construction of a
second complete Difference Engine #2 for himself, which has been on display at
the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, since May 10, 2008."

I've seen both machines and they are marvels. I was especially excited to
finally see the second machine in operation last fall. It is mechanical poetry
in motion.

------
florian-f
Plankalkül [0] is cool. I was impressed when I learned it had lambdas.

[0]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plankalk%C3%BCl](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plankalk%C3%BCl)

------
NelsonMinar
I've visited the Technikmuseum in Berlin too, the Zuse exhibit is fascinating.
A history I never knew. Honestly if I didn't see the things on display I'd
doubt it a bit. But the mechanical computer parts are there.

The fine article linked here is down at the moment, so here's a few other
links of interest.

Berlin museum: [http://www.sdtb.de/Mathematics-and-Computer-
Science.1256.0.h...](http://www.sdtb.de/Mathematics-and-Computer-
Science.1256.0.html)

Chess computers:
[https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Konrad+Zuse](https://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Konrad+Zuse)

Wikipedia:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse)

------
dbbolton
Looks like the site went down. Here's a cached link:

[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4wvG8zC...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:4wvG8zCYB3MJ:www.linuxvoice.com/konrad-
zuse-nearly-the-german-turing-5/+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us)

------
russnewcomer
In episode 60 [1] of the great (and sadly, ending soon) podcast Pragmatic,
John Chidgey talks some about the history of programming and more specifically
some about Turing, arguing that Turing is overrated. I largely agree, and
since I send John feedback after every episode, I sent him a longish rant,
reproduced as follows:

When talking about the history of programming, there's always a difficulty
because of the difference between computing and programming. It's nearly
undeniable, for example, that Vannevar Bush had a greater impact on computing
than did John Von Neumann (I'll take the haters on with that). As We May Think
is more important than Von Neumann's draft, because what Von Neumann was
talking about had already been created and codified, whereas As We May Think
was much more of a visionary work. Maybe put another way, I think Von Neumann
was a brilliant synthesist, bringing together the ideas of many into the next
step in the evolution of whatever he was working on at the time. Bush, on the
other hand, was a management/strategic level thinker who saw the revolutionary
step ahead of whatever he was working on. But, Bush was not a programmer in
any way, and his impact on programming is limited. Similarly, I think that
Turing is overly lionized for his programming contributions because of the
Turing test and Eliza. He provided a lot of the theoretical underpinnings, but
I would argue that C.A.R. Hoare's contributions have a greater reaching
practical impact than did Turing's. I suspect that Turing and Von Neumann had
political connections in the ACM and IEEE that led to their improved
historical standing. But as always, historical/political credit is almost as
much a function of who you know/where you are as what you've done. (I'm a huge
fan of Shannon, Mauchly, Adm. Hopper, Hoare, and Dijkstra, over others like
Turing and Von Neumann).

It's also very difficult, when just surveying computer history, to give proper
credit to Zuse, Lebedev, Scherbius, Rejewski, etc, due to the lack of English
Language resources on their accomplishments, and lingering bias against the
governments some of them worked for. One could make a very compelling argument
for Scherbius as having created _the_ most pivotal invention of the twentieth
century, because Enigma drove the large investment into cryptanalysis, which
led to the large investment in devices that eventually became the general
purpose computing machines of today.

There's also a large, long discussion to be had about the impact of figures
like Marvin Minsky, Bill Gosper, Richard Greenblatt, Dennis Ritchie, Ken
Thompson, Richard Stallman, Linus Torvalds, Brendan Eich, Donald Knuth, Peter
Norvig, or Alan Kay had on programming, and also on the impact figures like
Jack Goldman, Doug Engelbart, Steve Wozniak, Thomas Watson, Robert Noyce,
Gordon Moore, David Packard, Bill Hewlett, Steve Jobs, Nolan Bushnell, Larry
Ellison, Bill Gates, Vint Cerf, or Jim Clark had on computing. Few of those
guys cross over from programming to computing or vice versa, yet each have
critical contributions to be discussed and looked at. I don't know of a lot of
good books or resources, though, that really tackle this. Steven Levy's
Hackers is the canonical example, but it is heavily biased toward the AI Lab
crowds, Lisp hackers, and the early Unix pioneers, without touching on the big
industry/engineer types more than tangentially or even scornfully, and almost
completely ignored the military/NASA. I also really appreciated Peter Siebel's
Coders at Work, which was more inclusive but not really a history, more of a
set of conversations. I'm told Petzold's CODE is good, and of course deeper
into history there's the Godel, Escher, Bach: the Eternal Golden Braid, which
I have on my bookshelf and have to admit not getting to far into because I
don't really like math. Either way, as I'm sure you know, there is a wide,
wide history of programming and computing that could be explored more, and I
find it a shame that no one has done so with the historical rigor that I would
like. (Such a book would probably be $100+ because sales would be so small
since few people would be interested, and it would discourage others from
taking up future projects)

[1]
[http://techdistortion.com/podcasts/pragmatic/episode-60-or-w...](http://techdistortion.com/podcasts/pragmatic/episode-60-or-
was-that-doctor-sbaitso)

~~~
ghaff
There's always a tendency to focus in on a few "pivotal creators" when the
reality is much more diffuse. People like to know who the inventor of X was
and the reality is that the enshrined inventor, at best, made a particular
advance in commercialization or practicality--or simply got the good press.

Hackers is a good read but it arguably sacrifices historical completeness for
narrative flow. You mention the focus on the AI lab but then it also makes the
argument everything that happened on the east coast was eclipsed. But then,
that's what good stories do. I watched The Imitation Game last night and it
took enormous historical liberties--probably too many. Breaking the Code is
better in that regard. On the other hand, I saw a historical play about the
invention of ether last year that I felt was harmed by too literal attention
to less important threads of the central story.

------
davidw
What about Rudolf Von Hacklheber?

------
todorstoyanov
And what about John Atanasoff:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Vincent_Atanasoff](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Vincent_Atanasoff)

