The long lost manual for the Zuse Z4 has been found • Hacker News Board

Re: The long lost manual for the Zuse Z4 has been found

#31

Post by mellavora » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 11:42 AM UTC

imtringued wrote: post #11

akie wrote: post #10

There's a very lively startup scene in Berlin, but no-one in that scene seems to know that the world's first digital computer was built in Berlin. There's an obscure and easy to miss sign ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse#/media/File:2007-0... ) on the house he lived in while working on it, and another sign at the technical university, but that's about it. No big festivities in his name, no commemorations,…

It probably has to do with world war 2. It wasn't regular Germany where it was built in. It was in a Germany that was controlled by an insane lunatic.

I'm not sure that the then German government was fully supportive of Zuse's work, from the wikipedia article:

A request by his co-worker Helmut Schreyer—who had helped Zuse build the Z3 prototype in 1938[21]—for government funding for an electronic successor to the Z3 was denied as "strategically unimportant".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse

Re: The long lost manual for the Zuse Z4 has been found

#32

Post by tannhaeuser » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 11:48 AM UTC

akie wrote: post #10

There's a very lively startup scene in Berlin, but no-one in that scene seems to know that the world's first digital computer was built in Berlin. There's an obscure and easy to miss sign ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse#/media/File:2007-0... ) on the house he lived in while working on it, and another sign at the technical university, but that's about it. No big festivities in his name, no commemorations,…

Boasting about national achievements is considered bad form in Germany (considered a trait of people who've got nothing else to show).

Re: The long lost manual for the Zuse Z4 has been found

#33

Post by tannhaeuser » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 12:09 PM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #28

tomw1808 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know it's just an abbreviation that, by accident, is close to "Zuse", but has nothing to do with it (someone might want to correct me here if I'm wrong) It was developed by Germans, so SuSE means: Software und System-Entwicklung (or english: Software and systems development)

I always thought that this was not really a coincidence, but a clever pun on Zuse's name.

I'm German, and it never occurred to me as a pun. SuSE started out with a hippy-ish corporate style in the 90s so I guess they didn't intend to associate with old school computers but I may be wrong. I remember Siemens/Nixdorf financing/advertising the Konrad-Zuse-Museum, though.

Re: The long lost manual for the Zuse Z4 has been found

#34

Post by RoutinePlayer » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 12:12 PM UTC

Finally "found"?

Re: The long lost manual for the Zuse Z4 has been found

#35

Post by dreamcompiler » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 12:12 PM UTC

The Deutsches Museum in Munich is the most amazing engineering museum I've seen. I highly recommend it. I had all but forgotten about Zuse when I saw the computer mentioned in the article.

Re: The long lost manual for the Zuse Z4 has been found

#36

Post by tannhaeuser » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 12:15 PM UTC

DocTomoe wrote: post #26

brodo wrote: post #9

Deutsches Museum has a great collection of computers, including a Cray 1 and an original Apple 1 kit donated by Steve Jobs. However, most of the exhibitions in Deutsches Musem - including the computer science one - seem to be stuck in the 90's.

The Deutsches Museum is currently in a renovating and reconfiguration phase, has been for four years, and will be for at least another year. Things are about to change. I can but hope it won't change too much. I love the exhibit on nuclear power (with a life-sized cutaway of a containment vessel), the air&space exhibit (which includes a V2, and a piece of the moon) and the Newtonian physics exhibit.

I love their underground rebuild of a coal mine and their dated Faraday cage show, with humans exposed to high voltage and engineers in white knits turning keys.

Re: The long lost manual for the Zuse Z4 has been found

#37

Post by johndoe0815 » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 12:16 PM UTC

hans_castorp wrote: post #22

brodo wrote: post #9

Deutsches Museum has a great collection of computers, including a Cray 1 and an original Apple 1 kit donated by Steve Jobs. However, most of the exhibitions in Deutsches Musem - including the computer science one - seem to be stuck in the 90's.

> seem to be stuck in the 90's. Not sure if you would like to see newer machines or older ones. If you are complaining about the missing old ones, then it's not true. The Deutsches Museum in Munich as a Z3 and a Z4: https://www.deutsches-museum.de/ausstellungen/kommunikation/... It also has a "Siemens 2002" from 1960. https://www.deutsches-museum.de/ausstellungen/kommunikation/... And a UNIVAC I (IBM) from 1956: http…

The Z3 in the Deutsches Museum is only a replica, but one built by Konrad Zuse and his company in the 1960s. The original machine was destroyed in WW2. The Z4, however, is the one and only original machine.

If you´re interested in Zuse history, there´s a great exhibition of Zuse machines at the Huenfeld museum (the town where Zuse rebuilt his company after WW2): https://www.zuse-museum-huenfeld.de/ and the computing centre at Erlangen University (FAU) has restored their Z23 to working condition some years ago: https://www.video.uni-erlangen.de/search/term.html?q=Z23

The Technikmuseum in Berlin also has a Z3 replica built by Horst Zuse (Konrad Zuse´s son) and his students: http://z3-computer.de/

Most of the linked pages are in German, the Erlangen page has some interesting videos.

Re: The long lost manual for the Zuse Z4 has been found

#38

Post by layer8 » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 12:53 PM UTC

inglor_cz wrote: post #28

tomw1808 wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As far as I know it's just an abbreviation that, by accident, is close to "Zuse", but has nothing to do with it (someone might want to correct me here if I'm wrong) It was developed by Germans, so SuSE means: Software und System-Entwicklung (or english: Software and systems development)

I always thought that this was not really a coincidence, but a clever pun on Zuse's name.

Very unlikely. “Suse” is the short form of “Susanne” in German, similar to “Suzie” for “Suzanne” in English. For that reason Germans wouldn’t perceive it as a pun on “Zuse”, and also because in German pronunciation the soft “s” in “Suse” is phonetically very different from the hard “ts” in “Zuse”.

Re: The long lost manual for the Zuse Z4 has been found

#39

Post by ashton314 » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 12:58 PM UTC

The Deutsches Technik Museum in Berlin is pretty incredible. They’ve got a reproduction of the entirely mechanical Z1-computer. (The original was destroyed in the war if I’m not mistaken.) If you’re ever in Berlin, be sure to check it out. Take the U1/U2/U3 to Gleisdreieck. It’s within walking distance from there.

Re: The long lost manual for the Zuse Z4 has been found

#40

Post by phreeza » Mon, Sep 28, 2020, 1:01 PM UTC

It's fascinating that beside instructions on the conceptual level of how to operate the machine from a programming perspective, it also contains arts&crafts instructions on how to manually glue pieces of the command tapes together: https://www.e-manuscripta.ch/zut/content/pageview/2856533