His greatest achievement was the world's first functional program-controlled Turing-complete computer, the Z3, in 1941 (the program was stored on a punched tape). He received the Werner-von-Siemens-Ring in 1964 for the Z3.
His S2 computing machine is considered the first process-controlled computer, which
as used to help develop the Henschel Werke Hs 293 and Hs 294, which were precursors
to the modern cruise missile. It is also considered one of the first analog-to-digital converters. Many of his projects were in collaboration with the Nazi Germany, which supported, financed, and deployed many of them.
Zuse also designed the first high-level programming language, Plankalkül ("Plan Calculus"), first published in 1948, although this was a theoretical contribution, since the language was not implemented in his lifetime and did not directly influence early languages. One of the inventors of ALGOL (Heinz Rutishauser) wrote: "The very first attempt to devise an algorithmic language was undertaken in 1948 by K. Zuse. His notation was quite general, but the proposal never attained the consideration it deserved."
In addition to his technical work, Zuse founded one of the earliest computer businesses on the 1st of April 1941 (Zuse Ingenieurbüro und Apparatebau). This company built the Z4, which became the second commercial computer leased to ETH Zürich in 1950. Due to World War II, however, Zuse's work went largely unnoticed in the UK and the U.S.; possibly his first documented influence on a U.S. company was IBM's option on his patents in 1946. In the late 1960s, Zuse suggested the concept of a Calculating Space (a computation-based universe).
There is a replica of the Z3, as well as the Z4, in the Deutsches Museum in Munich.
The Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin in Berlin has an exhibition devoted to Zuse, displaying twelve of his machines, including a replica of the Z1, some original documents, including the specifications of Plankalkül, and several of Zuse's paintings.
Pre-WWII work and the Z1
Zuse Z1 replica in the German Museum of Technology in Berlin
Born in Berlin, Germany in 1910, his parents moved to Braunsberg, East Prussia in 1912, where his father worked as a postal clerk. Zuse visited the Collegium Hosianum in Braunsberg and after his he passed his Abitur in 1928. Zuse graduated in civil engineering from the Technische Hochschule Berlin-Charlottenburg in 1935. In his engineering studies, Zuse had to perform many routine calculations by hand, which he found mind-numbingly boring. This led him to dream about performing calculations by machine.
He started as a design engineer at the Henschel aircraft factory in Berlin-Schönefeld but resigned a year later to build a program driven/programmable machine.
Working in his parents' apartment in 1936, his first attempt, called the Z1, was a binary electrically driven mechanical calculator with limited programmability, reading instructions from a punched tape. In 1937 Zuse submitted two patents that anticipated a von Neumann architecture. He finished the Z1 in 1938. The Z1 never worked well, though, due to the lack of sufficiently precise mechanical parts. The Z1 and its original blueprints were destroyed during World War II.
Between 1987 and 1989, Zuse recreated the Z1, suffering a heart-attack midway through the project. It had 30,000 components, cost 800,000 DM, and required four individuals (including Zuse) to assemble it. Funding for this retrocomputing project was provided by Siemens and a consortium of five companies.
The Z2, Z3, and Z4
Statue of Zuse in Bad Hersfeld
Zuse's work was completed independent from other leading computer scientists and mathematicians of his day, including John Eckert, Howard Aiken, and John Mauchly. Between 1936-1945, he was in near total intellectual isolation. In 1939, Zuse was called for military service, where he was given the resources to ultimately build the Z2.[5] Zuse built the Z2, a revised version of the Z1, from telephone relays. The same year, he started a company, Zuse Apparatebau (Zuse Apparatus Engineering), to manufacture his machines..
Improving on the basic Z2 machine, he built the Z3 in 1941, which was a highly secretive project of the German government. It was a binary 22-bit floating point calculator featuring programmability with loops but without conditional jumps, with memory and a calculation unit based on telephone relays. The telephone relays used in his machines were largely collected from discarded stock. Despite the absence of conditional jumps, the Z3 was a Turing complete computer (ignoring the fact that no physical computer can be truly Turing complete because of limited storage size). However, Turing-completeness was never considered by Zuse (who had practical applications in mind) and only demonstrated in 1998 (see History of computing hardware).
The Z3, the first fully operational electro-mechanical computer, was partially financed by German government-supported DVL (Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt, i.e. German Experimentation-Institution for Aviation), which wanted their extensive calculations automated. A request by his co-worker Helmut Schreyer, who helped Zuse build the Z3 prototype in 1938, for government funding for an electronic successor to the Z3 was denied as "strategically unimportant". In 1937 Schreyer had advised Zuse to use vacuum tubes as switching elements, who at this time considered it a crazy idea ("Schnapsidee" in his own words). Zuse's company (with the Z3) was destroyed in 1945 by an Allied attack.
Fortunately, the partially finished, relay-based Z4, which Zuse had begun constructing in 1942, had been moved to a safe place earlier.
Plankalkül
Zuse designed the first high-level programming language, Plankalkül, from 1941 to 1945, although he did not publish it in its entirety until 1972. No compiler or interpreter was available for Plankalkül until a team from the Free University of Berlin implemented it in 2000.
S1 and S2
In 1940, the German government began funding him through the Aerodynamische Versuchsanstalt (AVA, Aerodynamic Research Institute), which used his work for the production of glide bombs. Zuse built the S1 and S2 computing machines, which were special purpose devices which computed aerodynamic corrections to the wings of radio-controlled flying bombs. The S2 featured an integrated analog-to-digital converter under program control, making it the first process-controlled computer.
These machines contributed to the Henschel Werke Hs 293 and Hs 294 developed by the German military between 1941 and 1945, which were the precursor to the modern cruise missile. The circuit design of the S1 was the predecessor of Zuse's Z11.
Zuse suspected that these machines had fallen into the hands of the Soviets by 1945.
Marriage and family
Konrad Zuse married Gisela Brandes in January 1945 - employing a carriage, himself dressed in tailcoat and top hat and with Gisela in wedding veil, for Zuse attached importance to a noble ceremony. Their son Horst, the first of five children, was born in November 1945.
Zuse the entrepreneur
Zuse's workshop at Neukirchen (situation January 2010)
Magnetic drum storage inside a Z31 (which was first displayed in 1963).
In 1946 Zuse founded one of the earliest computer companies: the Zuse-Ingenieurbüro Hopferau. Capital was raised through ETH Zurich and an IBM option on Zuse's patents.
Zuse founded another company, Zuse KG in Haunetal-Neukirchen in 1949; in 1957 the company’s head office moved to Bad Hersfeld. The Z4 was finished and delivered to the ETH Zurich, Switzerland in September 1950. At that time, it was the only working computer in continental Europe, and the second computer in the world to be sold, only beaten by the BINAC, which never worked properly after it was delivered. Other computers, all numbered with a leading Z, up to Z43, were built by Zuse and his company. Notable are the Z11, which was sold to the optics industry and to universities, and the Z22, the first computer with a memory based on magnetic storage.
By 1967, the Zuse KG had built a total of 251 computers. Due to financial problems, it was then sold to Siemens.
The artist Konrad Zuse
A first selection of Konrad Zuse´s paintings was published by RT-Distribution as fine art prints and introduced to the public at artexpo New York (USA) in 1994. On June 20 i.e. 21, 1995 the first internet page about artist and computerpioneer Konrad Zuse went online (http://www.rtd-net.de/Zuse.html) at Eunet Dortmund, Germany. This also was the Online-Premiere of Galeria Non+Ultra (http://www.Galeria-NonplusUltra.com), which shows art by Konrad Zuse and other artists. RTD, Nov 20, 2009
Calculating Space
In 1967 Zuse also suggested that the universe itself is running on a grid of computers (digital physics); in 1969 he published the book Rechnender Raum (translated into English as Calculating Space). This idea has attracted a lot of attention, since there is no physical evidence against Zuse's thesis. Edward Fredkin (1980s), Juergen Schmidhuber (1990s), Stephen Wolfram (A New Kind of Science) and others have expanded on it.
Zuse received several awards for his work. After he retired, he focused on his hobby, painting. Zuse died on 18 December 1995 in Hünfeld, Germany, near Fulda.
Awards
Werner-von-Siemens-Ring in 1964 (together with Fritz Leonhardt and Walter Schottky)
Harry H. Goode Memorial Award in 1965 (together with George Stibitz)
Bundesverdienstkreuz in 1972 - Great Cross of Merit
Computer History Museum Fellow Award in 1999 - weblink
Zuse Year 2010
The 100th anniversary of the birth of this computer pioneer is celebrated by exhibitions, lectures and workshops to remember his life and work and to bring attention to the importance of his invention to the digital age.
Literature
Konrad Zuse: The Computer - My Life, Springer Verlag, ISBN 3-540-56453-5, ISBN 0-387-56453-5
Jürgen Alex, Hermann Flessner, Wilhelm Mons, Horst Zuse: Konrad Zuse: Der Vater des Computers. Parzeller, Fulda 2000, ISBN 3-7900-0317-4
Raul Rojas (Hrsg.): Die Rechenmaschinen von Konrad Zuse. Springer, Berlin 1998, ISBN 3-540-63461-4.
Jürgen Alex: Wege und Irrwege des Konrad Zuse. In: Spektrum der Wissenschaft (dt. Ausgabe von Scientific American) 1/1997, ISSN 0170-2971.
Hadwig Dorsch: Der erste Computer. Konrad Zuses Z1 - Berlin 1936. Beginn und Entwicklung einer technischen Revolution. Mit Beiträgen von Konrad Zuse und Otto Lührs. Museum für Verkehr und Technik, Berlin 1989.
Clemens Kieser: „Ich bin zu faul zum Rechnen“ - Konrad Zuses Computer Z22 im Zentrum für Kunst und Medientechnologie Karlsruhe. In: Denkmalpflege in Baden-Württemberg, 4/34/2005, Esslingen am Neckar, S. 180-184, ISSN 0342-0027.
Arno Peters: Was ist und wie verwirklicht sich Computer-Sozialismus: Gespräche mit Konrad Zuse. Verlag Neues Leben, Berlin 2000, ISBN 3-355-01510-5.
Paul Janositz: Informatik und Konrad Zuse: Der Pionier des Computerbaus in Europa – Das verkannte Genie aus Adlershof. In: Der Tagesspiegel Nr. 19127, Berlin, 9. März 2006, Beilage Seite B3.
Jürgen Alex: Zum Einfluß elementarer Sätze der mathematischen Logik bei Alfred Tarski auf die drei Computerkonzepte des Konrad Zuse. TU Chemnitz 2006.
Jürgen Alex: Zur Entstehung des Computers - von Alfred Tarski zu Konrad Zuse. VDI-Verlag, Düsseldorf 2007, ISBN 978-3-18-150051-4, ISSN 0082-2361.
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