61–70 of 88 posts
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…
> there are no physical observations which contradict Zuse's notion, as he wrote it, of a computable universe. There is no model capable of simulating the universe either. I also wonder what such an observation would have to look like. Observations per se are unique and recorded and therefore can be reconstructed via trivial computation. Which brings us to the laws of physics. You may believe that they are utterly wr…
In any case, the laws of physics are not yet settled, and determinism is still a very live option. The notion of a continuum is, to me, even more bizarre than the notion of a deterministic universe -- and is also more bizarre than Everett's notion of a "wave function of the universe."
That is a tragic news… I wish I’ve heard of it in advance…
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.
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…
I think Zuse is underrated because he worked pretty much alone. The other names and particularly Von Nuemann were prolific collaborators apart from being very good at what they do. There’s probably a takeaway from how this turned out.
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…
You missed some important points that explain why he's not celebrated. His efforts received enormous amounts of funding from the Nazis. Much of his specialized 'computers' were explicitly for the war effort, including planes. He was a big fan of utilizing computing for racial and genealogy research. The Nazis had plans drawn out to murder orders of magnitude more people based on this sort of research had they won (Ge…
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…
There is another Museum of his, which is still funded.
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.
I guess its only a matter of time until we put the final nail in Röntgen's coffin and the Deutsche finally start using the proper term: X-rays.