

Zusie – My Relay Computer - new299
http://www.nablaman.com/relay/story.php

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nablaman
Hi everyone, I am the author of Zusie. I was alerted by a friend about this
thread. Thanks for all the interest!

The machine is actually more or less finished, even though the web page
doesn't say so. The only thing I was going to add, but haven't gotten around
to yet, is a mechanical master oscillator instead of the current solid-state
one. I might also add a proper relay based memory someday (I still have
thousands of relays in boxes.. :)

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jmartinpetersen
A very fascinating project, one I would never have the perseverance to see
through. Thanks for posting it.

It does, however, end with the machine being "not quite finished" in 2011, can
anyone find an update?

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new299
no, unfortunately I don't think he ever finished it. Though as he notes Zuse
built complete relay computers in the early 1940s (using discarded telephone
switching relays!). It's interesting that this development in computing has
kind of been overlooked (I'd guess because it took place in 1940s Germany).

I came across his work again as I was putting together a relay based
oscillator this weekend [1]. I wonder if I have enough relays to put together
a half adder. :)

[1] [http://41j.com/blog/2014/12/electromechanical-
oscillator/](http://41j.com/blog/2014/12/electromechanical-oscillator/)

~~~
onli
To qualify the "overlooked" part: In Germany, his work is part of basic
computing history every Computer Scientist should have at University. So his
general work is far from forgotten.

~~~
new299
That's really great to hear. Aside from this web page I'd unfortunately never
heard of his work before. If you have any references I'd be interested in
reading them.

It's interesting that the wikipedia pages on the Manchester Baby, ENIAC, and
Z3. All refer to them as "first computers" by one definition or another. I
guess the ones you end up hearing about are to a degree culturally determined.

I assumed something similar might have been developed in Japan. And it seems
they also developed a relay based computer in 1952 which I found interesting:

[http://museum.ipsj.or.jp/en/computer/dawn/0005.html](http://museum.ipsj.or.jp/en/computer/dawn/0005.html)

~~~
leoc
Well (according to Wiki, at least,
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z3_(computer)#The_Z3_as_a_univ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z3_\(computer\)#The_Z3_as_a_universal_Turing_machine)
) the Z3 was only accidentally Turing-equivalent, and the hack for writing
arbitrary programs on it was only discovered in 1998 (and wouldn't have been
practically useful anyhow). The Manchester Baby was operational and ran its
first program before the completion of the redesign and rebuild that made
ENIAC Turing-equivalent. However, it had only been built as a technology
demonstrator/testbed, and it was soon disassembled. (I say Turing-equivalent,
but Turing's work wasn't the inspiration for any of these efforts to build a
fully-programmable computer.)

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jhallenworld
This one is cool, almost no semiconductors:
[http://www.northdownfarm.co.uk/rory/tim/tim-8.htm](http://www.northdownfarm.co.uk/rory/tim/tim-8.htm)

~~~
bashinator
It blows my mind to think that, with the invention of the relay in 1835[0] and
the invention of boolean logic in 1847[1], a binary computer like this could
have been built almost a hundred years before it actually happened. There was
just never the right person looking at both parts of the puzzle.

This is my go-to answer for the old "if you could go back in time, what
present technology would you invent" dinner party question.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relay#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relay#History)
[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Boole#Symbolic_logic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Boole#Symbolic_logic)

~~~
pavel_lishin
I wonder what it would and could have been used for. Seems like it would have
been too large and expensive to be cost effective for most things, wouldn't
it?

~~~
bashinator
Well, the earliest IBM systems were used for processing census results, so
that's one possibility. Ballistic trajectories for artillery were first done
with analog computers, so probably not a good match. If you look up the
historical usage of log table books, there should be some very good
possibilities.

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jhallenworld
I made one of these, to sell:
[http://relaysbc.sourceforge.net/](http://relaysbc.sourceforge.net/)

I need to make some more of them..

~~~
sitkack
These look gorgeous, I searched ebay for the boards, ;)

Drum memory might be a nice touch.

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StephenFalken
"The movie Tron: Legacy [1], which revolves around a world inside a computer
system, features a character named Zuse [2], presumably in honour of Konrad
Zuse."

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse#Zuse_Year_2010](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse#Zuse_Year_2010)

[2]
[http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0209988/](http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0209988/)

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bainsfather
His 'Zusie Simulator' is also interesting to play with - watch the bits change
as the program runs.

[http://www.nablaman.com/relay/sim/zusie.html](http://www.nablaman.com/relay/sim/zusie.html)

