11–20 of 56 posts
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Charles Babbage is as far as I know the uncontested inventor of the computer, which somehow even German schools teach about.
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.
Leonardo da Vinci also invented tanks and helicopters, and then it took a couple of hundred years to build some.
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.
Also seems Turing and Zuse probably met in 1947: http://www.mathcomp.leeds.ac.uk/turing2012/Images/Turing_Zus...
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.
Agree. The Z3 is exhibited at the Deutsches Museum in Munich: http://www.deutsches-museum.de/en/exhibitions/communication/... Here's the Z3 in action (German only, try subtitles): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUXnhVrT4CI
Turing did brilliant work, but Zuse did the job of Turing and Tommy Flowers, working in isolation with very limited resources.
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.
Agree. The Z3 is exhibited at the Deutsches Museum in Munich: http://www.deutsches-museum.de/en/exhibitions/communication/... Here's the Z3 in action (German only, try subtitles): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUXnhVrT4CI
http://www.sdtb.de/Mathematics-and-Computer-Science.1256.0.h...
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.
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...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_science
[3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer#Electromechanical
- 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
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculating_Space
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.
Agree. The Z3 is exhibited at the Deutsches Museum in Munich: http://www.deutsches-museum.de/en/exhibitions/communication/... Here's the Z3 in action (German only, try subtitles): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUXnhVrT4CI