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).
The long lost manual for the Zuse Z4 has been found
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Re: The long lost manual for the Zuse Z4 has been found
#52There'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,…
Zuse built the first computers in Berlin, but they were only used in the war-time government ministries afaik. After the war, he sold his first computer, which I would consider commercial available, to ETH Zurich in Switzerland. He founded 2 companies, but both were not successful compared to e.g. Intel. He would be really famous and well-known if he had managed to create a computing giant. He never had a university employment, so his papers were not well known compared to Turing and there weren't a lot of them. He even didn't publish his PhD thesis where he invented the first programming language and created an elaborate demo in which he programmed the first chess engine (also afaik). I think in science being the first is overrated and not that important. You have to publish and popularise your idea to really have an impact (schmidhuber would disagree). So his intellectual legacy was merely that he was the first, but not really influential. And his commercial success was also limited.
I think it's tragic, it was an enormous wasted potential for germany. It might be that he never was the great entrepreneur with the skills to build a tech-giant, but he was undoubtedly a genius who invented the future. He could have an enormous impact if he were equipped with a big lab and funding, if he would have taken the academic route. But Germany wasn't (and is still not) able to support geniuses that don't complete the usual strict path to professorship (study -> phd -> habilitation/post-doc).
Re: The long lost manual for the Zuse Z4 has been found
#53There'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,…
The Deutsches Technikmuseum commemorates his contributions too. It was one of the things I marveled at in that geek paradise of a museum. Because otherwise the only time I ever heard of Zuse is in a few paragraphs in the cursory and customary "History of Programming Languages" that opened my PL class at uni. (Claims below are completely opinions , very unsubstantiated, yours might vary, doesn't matter, just my musing…
Re: The long lost manual for the Zuse Z4 has been found
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
The proof that the Z3 is turing complete is pretty funny: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1945455 http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/inst/ag-ki/rojas_home/documents/...
I knew that there was a proof, but never read the paper before. Now that I did, I think that proof is garbage tbh. For Turing completeness, a fixed, constant-sized program needs to be able to handle arbitrary inputs and use arbitrary amounts of memory. It's important to distinguish the model from the implementation here. Theoretically, a language like Python is Turing complete. (And BTW you don't need infinite precis…
Re: The long lost manual for the Zuse Z4 has been found
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many people i know in Berlin know that one of the first mechanical calculators is in the technical museum Berlin, but those people don’t know about concepts like turing-equivalent, so they call it a Computer. Many great inventions have a nationalist folklore surrounding it, often ascribing a development to some national hero, while ignoring the process of development as a whole or parallel developments in other count…
The proof that the Z3 is turing complete is pretty funny: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1945455 http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/inst/ag-ki/rojas_home/documents/...
I agree with that analysis and think Turing-completeness is overrated.
Re: The long lost manual for the Zuse Z4 has been found
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
Boasting about national achievements is considered bad form in Germany (considered a trait of people who've got nothing else to show).
*taught to be bad form. You know why[1]. Which only made Germany the hidden champion of hidden champion companies. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoLIU2NI66w
Re: The long lost manual for the Zuse Z4 has been found
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
*taught to be bad form. You know why[1]. Which only made Germany the hidden champion of hidden champion companies. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoLIU2NI66w
I do not understand your comment and I am doubly confused after watching the linked video.
Apologies for the confusing video, but you're watching a master of dark humor.
Re: The long lost manual for the Zuse Z4 has been found
#58Glad I now have a manual to my Z4 in the basement.
Should include "Don't be funny."
Re: The long lost manual for the Zuse Z4 has been found
#59There'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,…