
Konrad Zuse and the digital revolution he started 75 years ago - mh-cx
http://www.dw.com/en/konrad-zuse-and-the-digital-revolution-he-started-with-the-z3-computer-75-years-ago/a-19249238
======
mafribe
Also of interest are some of his other innovations:

\- Plankalkuel, by some criteria the first high-level programming language
[1].

\- Digital physics [2]. I have no idea if this is taken seriously by
physicists.

\- First chess program, predating Wiener, Shannon and Turing [3].

\- First implementation of floating point numbers [4].

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plankalkül](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plankalkül)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculating_Space](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculating_Space)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess#Chronology](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_chess#Chronology)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_point#History](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_point#History)

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
Amazing work.

>The original notation was two dimensional. (!)

------
pieter1976
Good to see Zuse on HN. It's possible to go and see his machines in Germany
and I highly recommend it. This is a "forgotten" part of computing history
because of WWII and deserves the light of day.

~~~
mh-cx
Agree. The Z3 is exhibited at the Deutsches Museum in Munich:

[http://www.deutsches-
museum.de/en/exhibitions/communication/...](http://www.deutsches-
museum.de/en/exhibitions/communication/computers/universal-computers/)

Here's the Z3 in action (German only, try subtitles):

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUXnhVrT4CI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUXnhVrT4CI)

~~~
c7h
I can highly recommend a visit there. Not only you can see an original Z4 and
a replica of the Z3, but also lot's of more science and history related
exhibitions. Don't miss the Enigma!

~~~
ptaipale
Among the more impressive specimens, you can also see an A4 rocket (better
known as V2).

------
jdietrich
Zuse is an interesting example of history being written by the victors. Ask
any German who invented the computer and they'll tell you it was Konrad Zuse,
but he is almost completely unknown elsewhere.

Turing did brilliant work, but Zuse did the job of Turing _and_ Tommy Flowers,
working in isolation with very limited resources.

~~~
cmarschner
As can be seen on Wikipedia: [1] vs. [2] - the English version of "computer
science" does not mention Zuse. Time to change?

Similarly, the German version of "Computer" mentions Zuse 20 times [3]; the
English version starts describing the Z2 [4].

Quite fascinating how Wikipedia is written through the local lense.

[1]
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informatik#Entwicklung_moderne...](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informatik#Entwicklung_moderner_Rechenmaschinen)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_science](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_science)

[3]
[https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer](https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer)

[4]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer#Electromechanical](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer#Electromechanical)

~~~
wslh
Excellent catch! I love Wikipedia with all their faults but probably we need
not so difficult to build tools to recognize anomalies between Wikipedia
cultures... sorry, languages.

------
jcrawfordor
So, Zuse's development were indeed important, but the Zuse Z3 had in important
limitation that the article doesn't mention, which leads some people to not
count it as "first": The Z3 was largely not Turing complete.

This is because the Z3 had no conditional branching. In 1998 it was shown that
the Z3 actually didn't need conditional branching, and it was Turing complete
but only because it is possible to unroll conditional statements into a
version where both branches are evaluated and then the result of one is
cancelled. However, at the time of the Z3's development and use, this wasn't
known.

So while the Z3 is indeed an important early computer, it shares a significant
discontinuity with modern computing that reflects the time. The Z3 was not
intended as a "computer" in the modern sense, it was more of a calculating
machine that could perform repeat arithmetic more quickly. It was never
intended for the more complex roles we use computers in today.

A lot of people don't count the Z3 as the first programmable digital computer
because of this limitation. If you disqualify it for that reason, the title
probably goes to the British Colossus the next year.

Obviously Zuse did develop conditional branching (such as in his language
Plankalkül), but that was years later and by then it had already been done by
others. To Zuse's credit, he probably would have gotten to it much faster had
he not had a real problem with allied bombing destroying his work.

A major takeaway from this is that assigning titles like "first" and "inventor
of computing" is quite silly. Computer science developed very, very quickly,
with many of it key developments made by multiple people in parallel. We are
largely familiar with what happened in the West for sociopolitical reasons,
but similar work was done in Germany and the Soviet Union, often successfully.
However, calling Zuse the inventor of computer science is as uncharitable to
Turing as the reverse is to Zuse, both had their successes and failures.

When I give talks on computer history, I often like to say things like "Steve
Jobs, inventor of the Computer" to elicit a laugh. The unfortunate thing is
that sometimes people don't realize that it's a joke.

------
porsupah
Minor trivia - one of the TRON: Legacy writers confirmed to me on Twitter that
the character "Zuse" was indeed named in honor of the gentleman in question.

------
ericssmith
"And, thanks to Konrad Zuse, computers and computer networks are what we
have."

Holy smokes, what an inaccurate statement. Arguably one of the obstacles to
progress in technology is due the persistence of the fundamental computer
design that has been employed since "Baby" ran its first program just before
lunch on June 21, 1948, including an approach to fast random memory accesses.
This approach was novel, based on CRTs used in radar. Most everything else --
design-wise -- was from the Moore School Lectures of 1946. And the really
inspirational part of those was from the work on the ENIAC.

The missing piece that needs to be more generally appreciated is how the early
work on practical, general-purpose computers was quietly done in England while
the Americans were squabbling over who was first.

------
genedickson
There is a very important piece of history left out of this article and
comments. The Nazis hired IBM to do the bulk of their computing. They may have
used the Z3, but my uderstanding is that they didn't use it, though since it
had such a narrowly specified field of use they could have used it and IBM
wouldn't have known the difference. But the fact is that IBM supplied, at the
very least, the vast majority of computer tech for the Nazis.

I'd be very interested in a detailed comparison between whatever IBM was using
at the time, the capabilities of the Z3, and whether it could have been
modified to do the types of work IBM did. IBM's primary notoriety about all
this is that they helped the Nazis to locate members of groups to be
exterminated, but I expect that was a small part of what they did for the
Nazis. But no IBM execs faced the Nuremburg Tribunals.

Also, I think Zuse at least somewhat well known in the U.S. The most basic
computer books I have seen all have something about him. The information is
available and common in the U.S. in elementary computer books like they use to
teach schoolkids what computers are. I've read a fair amount of stuff about
him in elementary school computer texts that I got in thrift stores and like
that. The basic information about who he was and what he did is commonly
available. Details are less common, so when I saw the post I immediately
checked it out, whereas I more commonly open up pages in new tabs and read
them after I've done my shopping through the feed. But the reason I recognized
the name of the man and the machine is because of elementary school books that
I picked up in a thrift store in 99.

~~~
mwfunk
I was under the impression that once the war broke out, IBM in Germany was cut
off from the rest of the company, and the support provided to the German
government that was so controversial was from the severed German appendage of
IBM rather than something that IBM proper directed or profited from (sort of
like how Coca-Cola's facilities in Germany turned into Fanta, which ironically
made its way back to America after the war).

Is this not true? That's not to say that non-German former IBM employees who
offered assistance in Nazi Germany shouldn't be considered Nazi collaborators,
but I never thought of their actions as reflecting on IBM as a whole or IBM's
leadership at the time.

Of course IBM made a decision to do business with the Nazi government prior to
the war, but public perceptions of the Nazis in America were very different in
the '30s, partially because the Nazis weren't nearly as well-understood then
as now. Hitler was Life Magazine's Man of the Year in 1938, and prominent
Americans like Charles Lindbergh and Henry Ford were known to be admirers.

None of this is to excuse anyone's delusions about Hitler or the Nazis, or to
excuse those who helped them. I just never thought it was 100% appropriate to
tar IBM with that particular brush. Or am I missing vital information (very
possible)?

~~~
genedickson
The missing vital information is this: IBM Berlin would not have been cut off
until the U.S. entered the war. The war broke out years before, and the human
rights abuses began years before that. IBM absolutely knew what was up for
years by the time the U.S. manipulated Hitler into declaring war on us after
Pearl Harbor (That's a whole story in itself involving a Nazi spy who was
serving in the U.S. Congress). They were worse than Nazi collaborators; they
didn't have to worry about being shot if they didn't do what they were told.
The news reports about the holocaust were largely discounted; even Jews didn't
believe them, but IBM had access to inside information and would have known
why Hitler was so obsessed with census data. They had to know that the news
reports were true. Not to say that the plight of the various groups the final
solution was applied to would have been significantly different if IBM hadn't
been involved.

------
marktangotango
Throwing a mention of Atanosoff at Iowa State university in here, who's
contributions were significant, but little known.

------
zer00eyz
The history of computing is filled with so many names, and odd or tangled
stories, this is one that I was un-aware of, and is super interesting.

If you like these strange connections you should go and read about the
Jacquard loom, that was using punch cards to control the patterns produced! It
can be argued that "programmability" came before general purpose computing...

------
eternalban
Someone mentioned the V2 here. Interesting contrast between post-war careers
of Von Brown and Zuse.

------
tiatia
Konrad Who?

~~~
kuschku
The person who invented the computer. Which somehow no US school teaches
about.

He also developed a very awesome high-level language very early on.

~~~
jacquesm
Charles Babbage is as far as I know the uncontested inventor of the computer,
which somehow even German schools teach about.

~~~
mh-cx
Was it Turing complete? Because Zuse's Z3 was.

I'm not saying though, that this is a criteria for calling any machine a
computer. But it's probably what sets Zuse's achievement apart.

UPDATE: I've just learned that Babbage's language was also Turing complete. So
Zuse's achievement is solely having physically built the first working
computer, while Babbage's machine was never realized.

~~~
elcapitan
Babbage invented the concept of the programmable computer, Zuse built a
programmable electronic computer, which could later be shown to be turing-
complete. Those things are pretty subtle, and the 'national' version is always
the least subtle, I guess ;)

Leonardo da Vinci also invented tanks and helicopters, and then it took a
couple of hundred years to build some.

~~~
dTal
Slight difference - da Vinci's tanks and helicopters wouldn't actually have
worked, whereas the Analytical Engine absolutely would have.

~~~
elcapitan
"Absolutely would have worked" is probably the closest you can get to modern
software development ;)

Or more seriously put: It's a concept for a machine with 55k moving parts and
powered by a steam engine. "Would work" is probably a bold statement
considering how far off theoretical designs always are from the engineering
reality, by all experience.

~~~
jacquesm
[http://plan28.org/](http://plan28.org/)

~~~
elcapitan
"We have been pecking away at Babbage’s original design drawings for some
while now and have found with regret that we are unable to reverse engineer a
coherent and consistent understanding of the Analytical Engine from the
mechanical drawings alone. "

[http://blog.plan28.org/2016/05/spring-2016-report-to-
compute...](http://blog.plan28.org/2016/05/spring-2016-report-to-
computer.html)

If you read further, it becomes pretty clear that it's more or less a
theoretical idea. A great one though, granted.

