Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Konrad Zuse Museum shutting down due to lack of funding

heise.de

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 88 posts

Re: Konrad Zuse Museum shutting down due to lack of funding

#51

Post by ahofmann »

jacquesm wrote: post #14

For every bit of history there is 'the danger period', when it is still recent enough that most people don't consider it special but old enough that special effort needs to be made to preserve it. Random chance as much as anything else determines what eventually makes it to the status of 'precious antique'. I hope they find a way to mothball it until society is more appreciative, I think it is a unique collection and…

The work of Zuse is way out of the danger zone, isn't it? Mobile phones with LCDs are in the danger zone, or the phone booth, but not the first working computers ever build.

Re: Konrad Zuse Museum shutting down due to lack of funding

#52

Post by ahartmetz »

trentor wrote: post #7

Location, location, location. It's just in the middle of absolutely nothing. The surrounding has a bit of nature as appeal but it's depression county in regards of everything else.

I think Hoyerswerda is to this day best known for something that happened in the early 90s: Local neo-nazis rioted against and physically attacked some foreign contract workers and asylum seekers while the local police watched and did nothing.

Re: Konrad Zuse Museum shutting down due to lack of funding

#53

Post by embedding-shape »

jcranmer wrote: post #44
croes wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nevertheless, the Z3 was Turing-complete – how to implement a universal Turing machine on the Z3 was shown in 1998 by Raúl Rojas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z3_(computer)

One of the things about Turing-completeness is that it is very easy to become accidentally Turing-complete, since the conditions you need for completeness are very weak. (Famously, C++ template instantiation is unintentionally Turing-complete). Z3 is an example of an accidentally Turing-complete machine.

> Z3 is an example of an accidentally Turing-complete machine.

Kind of easy to let that pass though, given the "imitation game" wasn't even introduced by Turing until way after the Z3 machine was completed.

Re: Konrad Zuse Museum shutting down due to lack of funding

#54

Post by pantalaimon »

dirkt wrote: post #46
lb1lf wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you should mention it, I was aware of the Zuse museum and figured I'd jump on a train next time I was in Berlin to go check it out. (In fairness, I've been thinking this the past four or five times I've gone to Berlin, on the assumption the museum would only get better while I procrastinated...) Anyway, three minutes ago, after reading about the museum's likely fate (sigh!) on HN, I've booked tickets to Berlin…

I had the same idea, but it's already closed for the public starting 1st of September [1] (so tomorrow). Also, this museum is closer to Dresden than to Berlin... [1] https://zuse-computer-museum.com

2h23 by train from Berlin isn't too bad

Re: Konrad Zuse Museum shutting down due to lack of funding

#55

Post by legulere »

gnramires wrote: post #10
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #2

Zuse is probably the most under-appreciated thinker of the 20th century. Everybody's heard of Claude Shannon, von Neumann, Feynman, and all the rest of 'em, but Zuse's enormous contributions have received rather little attention. To summarize a couple of the highlights: In 1936 Germany, Konrad Zuse began developing the Z1, a mechanical calculating machine programmed via perforated 35mm film. By 1937, he had broadened…

> to surmise that our universe is computable by a deterministic computer program Please an expert chime in to complement, but I believe simulation in quantum mechanics is a quite interesting and not so simple topic. I believe the more correct thing to say is that quantum mechanics is approximable than simply computable. Don't forget, QM and current physical theories use real numbers, which are not digitally represent…

Any text/program/formula describing a real number can be represented as an integer number, therefore there's only a countable amount of real numbers that can be worked with.

Re: Konrad Zuse Museum shutting down due to lack of funding

#56

Post by JsonDemWitOster »

lb1lf wrote: post #41
wvbdmp wrote: post #29

Sad, but the reality is, Hoyerswerda is a small town in east east Germany and computer museums are already super niche in general. How many tourists could they possibly get? Maybe the Nixdorf museum in Paderborn can snatch it up. Paderborn is no metropolis either, but at least it’s relatively central and the museum gets 13 times as many yearly visitors.

Funny you should mention it, I was aware of the Zuse museum and figured I'd jump on a train next time I was in Berlin to go check it out. (In fairness, I've been thinking this the past four or five times I've gone to Berlin, on the assumption the museum would only get better while I procrastinated...) Anyway, three minutes ago, after reading about the museum's likely fate (sigh!) on HN, I've booked tickets to Berlin…

I hope the Deutsches Technikmuseum (Berlin) still has that corner dedicated to Zuse. It was there when I visited in 2019.

And overall, I'd wager you'd nerd snipe yourself at DT anyway. Not just with computers but with trains, waterships, aeroships cameras---you name it. That's an easy ~5h to kill at least. I only had to leave because I got tired. The curiosity is strong but the legs are, alas, fragile.

Re: Konrad Zuse Museum shutting down due to lack of funding

#57

Post by sparqlittlestar »

JsonDemWitOster wrote: post #56
lb1lf wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Funny you should mention it, I was aware of the Zuse museum and figured I'd jump on a train next time I was in Berlin to go check it out. (In fairness, I've been thinking this the past four or five times I've gone to Berlin, on the assumption the museum would only get better while I procrastinated...) Anyway, three minutes ago, after reading about the museum's likely fate (sigh!) on HN, I've booked tickets to Berlin…

I hope the Deutsches Technikmuseum (Berlin) still has that corner dedicated to Zuse. It was there when I visited in 2019. And overall, I'd wager you'd nerd snipe yourself at DT anyway. Not just with computers but with trains, waterships, aeroships cameras---you name it. That's an easy ~5h to kill at least. I only had to leave because I got tired. The curiosity is strong but the legs are, alas, fragile.

It was still there in spring 2026!

Re: Konrad Zuse Museum shutting down due to lack of funding

#58

Post by layer8 »

gnramires wrote: post #10
A_D_E_P_T wrote: post #2

Zuse is probably the most under-appreciated thinker of the 20th century. Everybody's heard of Claude Shannon, von Neumann, Feynman, and all the rest of 'em, but Zuse's enormous contributions have received rather little attention. To summarize a couple of the highlights: In 1936 Germany, Konrad Zuse began developing the Z1, a mechanical calculating machine programmed via perforated 35mm film. By 1937, he had broadened…

> to surmise that our universe is computable by a deterministic computer program Please an expert chime in to complement, but I believe simulation in quantum mechanics is a quite interesting and not so simple topic. I believe the more correct thing to say is that quantum mechanics is approximable than simply computable. Don't forget, QM and current physical theories use real numbers, which are not digitally represent…

I agree about the continuum only allowing an approximated simulation by Turing computation. But that’s orthogonal to QM, you already get that with classical fields. In Everettian QM, the evolution of the quantum state of the universe is still deterministic, following the Schrödinger equation. There is no probabilistic aspect in simulating it as a whole.

Regarding the continuum, the final word hasn’t been spoken with regard to the physical world, and probably also with regard to mathematics, since there is some level of controversy about the continuum even in the foundations of mathematics. We know for example that the continuum hypothesis is independent of ZFC, so what’s up with that. It might very well turn out that there is no continuum in physical reality. However, it seems highly unlikely that it’ll be anything like the naive conception of a cellular automaton.

Re: Konrad Zuse Museum shutting down due to lack of funding

#59

Post by xyzelement »

pmkary wrote: post #16

It’s sad to see how the American propaganda destroyed the true genius of computation, to a point that there is not even a museum for his work. Imagine doing the work of many, and many years before them, and then getting here.

What's the American propaganda piece of it?

Re: Konrad Zuse Museum shutting down due to lack of funding

#60

Post by layer8 »

embedding-shape wrote: post #53
jcranmer wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the things about Turing-completeness is that it is very easy to become accidentally Turing-complete, since the conditions you need for completeness are very weak. (Famously, C++ template instantiation is unintentionally Turing-complete). Z3 is an example of an accidentally Turing-complete machine.

> Z3 is an example of an accidentally Turing-complete machine. Kind of easy to let that pass though, given the "imitation game" wasn't even introduced by Turing until way after the Z3 machine was completed.

The imitation game (aka Turing test) has nothing to do with Turing completeness.
Post reply on HN