Konrad Zuse
| Konrad Zuse | |
|---|---|
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| Institutions | Zuse KG |
| Nationality | German |
| Death year | 1995 |
| Known for | Z3 computer |
| Birth year | 1910 |
| Notable works | Z1; Z3; Plankalkül |
| Occupation | Engineer, computing pioneer |
| Field | Computer engineering |
| Wikidata | Q60093 |
Konrad Zuse (1910–1995) was a German engineer and inventor widely hailed as a computing pioneer. He built some of the world’s first programmable computers in the 1930s and 1940s, using a binary (0-and-1) system and floating-point arithmetic to handle real numbers. His machines – the Z1 through Z4 – anticipated many features of modern digital computers. Zuse also created Plankalkül, the first high-level algorithmic programming language. Working largely alone during World War II, his work remained little known abroad at the time, but he is today recognized as the “father of the computer” in Germany and an originator of ideas that underpin modern computing.
Early Life and Education
Zuse was born on June 22, 1910, in Berlin. His father, Emil Zuse, was a postal service employee. When Konrad was a small child the family moved to Braunsberg (then in East Prussia, now Braniewo in Poland) and later to Hoyerswerda in Saxony. He showed an early aptitude for mechanical devices and engineering. As a teenager he built models (using a German Meccano set called Stabil) and even drew futuristic city plans inspired by the film Metropolis. He attended local secondary schools and in 1928 entered the Technische Hochschule Berlin (now the Technical University of Berlin). He tried several fields – mechanical engineering and architecture – before graduating in 1935 with a degree in civil engineering. During his studies he won prizes for mechanical designs and grew interested in automating the tedious “static” engineering calculations needed for bridge and aircraft design.
After university, Zuse worked briefly (1935–36) as a structural engineer at the Henschel aircraft company in Berlin. There he had to perform many repetitive calculations by hand or with simple desk calculators. These laborious computations inspired him to explore automating them with a machine By 1936, with financial support from his parents and help from friends, Zuse set out to build a calculating machine in his parents’ living room. He was almost entirely on his own: unlike engineers in the United States or Britain, he had no team or institutional backing. As he later recalled, he started “working independently and without knowledge” of other computing projects such as Babbage’s designs.
Major Works and Ideas
Zuse’s main contributions were his series of “Z” computers and his early work on programming languages. His first machine was the Z1. Built from 1936 to 1938, the Z1 was an experimental, fully mechanical computer. It was a binary machine: numerical quantities were represented in base-2 (using only 0 and 1), encoded by the positions of thousands of metal rods and plates. This binary design was unusual at the time – most calculators then were decimal and mechanical. The Z1 included a memory (a stack of precision metal sheets) and could read instructions from punched paper tape. In 1938 it was demonstrated to compute small problems such as the determinant of a 3×3 matrix. However, its mechanical components often jammed and it was not very reliable The Z1’s main value was in proving the underlying logical design.
For greater reliability, Zuse’s next machine, the Z2 (completed around 1940), mixed mechanical and electrical parts. The Z2 used telephone relays (electromechanical switches) for the arithmetic unit while retaining the Z1’s mechanical memory. This hybrid “electromechanical” design was more stable. The Z2 was essentially an experiment, but its success helped Zuse secure funding from the German Aerodynamics Research Institute (DLR) to build a fully operational successor.
That successor was the Z3, finished in 1941. The Z3 is historically significant as the first fully functional, program-controlled computing machine. Like the Z2, the Z3 used electromechanical relays for both its memory and arithmetic circuits. It could perform basic arithmetic on floating-point numbers: that is, it represented real numbers by a fraction and an exponent so that very large and very small values could be handled (similar to the scientific notation we use on paper). The Z3’s programs came from punched paper tape, and it contained about 2,600 relays in all. The German aircraft industry used the Z3 during the war to solve systems of equations for wing vibration analysis.
Each of the Z machines improved on its predecessor. After the Z3, Zuse began the Z4 in 1942. Work on the Z4 was disrupted by Allied bombing raids, but the roughly completed machine survived by being disassembled and moved several times for safety. After the war, the Z4 was rebuilt and installed at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich in 1950 — making it the first working computer in Europe after World War II (The Z4 continued to compute until 1955.) Meanwhile, Zuse founded a company in 1949 (later called Zuse KG) to commercialize his designs. His firm produced vacuum-tube computers (such as the Z22) and, later, some of the world’s first transistorized computers (such as the Z23) in the 1950s. These machines were used in German universities and research labs and helped launch computing in postwar Germany.
In addition to his computing machinery, Zuse pursued several other innovations. He built special-purpose machines (the S1 and S2) in 1943–44 to compute measurements for aircraft manufacturing; for example, the S2 included built-in measuring devices that fed data directly into calculations He also developed the L1, an experimental “logic computer” for solving purely logical problems (in effect an early ideas of an inference engine), though that machine remained a prototype. Later, in 1961, Zuse designed the Graphomat, a mechanical plotter that could produce architectural and engineering drawings under computer control, using finely geared movements he devised.
Perhaps Zuse’s most forward-looking idea was his Plankalkül (German for “Plan Calculus”). Beginning in 1943, while displaced at a mountain farmhouse in Bavaria during the last year of the war, Zuse wrote down a complete notation for describing computational problems and procedures. This was essentially a high-level programming language: it included variables, arithmetic and logical operations, loops and conditional statements, and even structured data types like arrays and records In modern terms, Plankalkül anticipated many features of languages like C or Pascal. Zuse used his notation to formulate sample programs (famously including routines for playing chess), but the work was only an internal report at the time. Plankalkül was not published until 1948 (and not widely implemented until decades later) Still, it makes Zuse the author of arguably the first algorithmic programming language in history.
Another late-career idea of Zuse’s was Rechnender Raum_ (Calculating Space), a 1969 book in which he speculated that the physical universe might itself run on discrete, computational rules. In essence he suggested that space-time could be viewed as a gigantic cellular automaton. This concept foreshadowed later developments in “digital physics” and inspired thinkers like Edward Fredkin, Jürgen Schmidhuber and Stephen Wolfram to explore computational models of nature.
Method
Zuse’s engineering method was notable for its thoroughness and inventiveness. He designed the logic of his computers from the ground up and then built them piece by piece, often machining components himself in the small Berlin workshop of his parents’ home. For the Z1, he chose the binary number system (base-2) instead of the usual decimal (base-10) used by mechanical calculators. In a binary system, each bit can be only 0 or 1; Zuse implemented this with metal rods that could slide between two positions to represent 0 and 1 The binary design greatly simplified the machine logic, since it reduced complex decimal mechanisms to a few types of on/off switches.
After the Z1’s many mechanical jams proved unreliability, Zuse moved to an electromechanical approach for his next machines. The arithmetic and memory units in the Z2 and Z3 were built from telephone relays, which are electromagnetic switches. Each relay could close or open a circuit, effectively acting as a 0/1 switch under electrical control. In practice Zuse wired thousands of relays together to form the adders, multipliers and registers of his computer Input and output were handled by punched paper tape – a long strip of stiff paper with holes encoding instructions and data. A tape reader would scan the holes to feed commands into the relay logic. This method of external program input made the machine “programmable”: it could run different tasks simply by changing the punched tape.
Zuse debated whether to use vacuum tubes (the electronic tubes common in Allied machines at the time). His friend Helmut Schreyer, an electronics engineer, built experimental tube circuits and argued for them. But Zuse was skeptical of tubes’ reliability. He believed relays, though slower, would be more dependable in the long run. Indeed, wartime German resources favored telephone relay technology, and Zuse’s requests for an all-electronic machine were turned down by authorities who (mistakenly) thought victory was near Thus Zuse’s wartime machines remained electromechanical.
A key innovation in Zuse’s machines was floating-point arithmetic. Unlike simple integer calculators, the Z3 and Z4 could store real numbers (like 1.23 × 10^4). Floating point represents a number in two parts – a mantissa and an exponent (similar to scientific notation). This let the machines handle a wide range of values and decimally scaled calculations. At the time, most computing devices could only handle fixed-point or integers, so this was an advanced feature. The IEEE Computer Society later recognized Zuse’s pioneering role in proposing both binary computing and floating-point arithmetic.
Influence
Zuse’s influence on computing was subtle but significant, especially in Germany and Europe. In the 1930s and 1940s he was working in isolation, unknown to Allied researchers, but after the war his achievements became clearer. His Z-series computers proved that fully programmable digital machines were possible. The Z3, for example, is often cited as the first practical computer, predating more famous Allied machines like ENIAC (which used thousands of vacuum tubes) by a few years. Zuse himself marveled that the Americans built ENIAC with “18,000 tubes” when his Z3 had done similar work with a few thousand relays.
In the 1950s, Zuse’s company helped bring computing to German science and industry. The vacuum-tube Z22 and transistorized Z23 were among Europe’s first commercial computers. The German Research Foundation subsidized their use in universities, effectively “jump-starting” computer science education in the country By the mid-1960s Zuse KG was producing computers for business and research, and Zuse himself received awards for his work, including the IEEE Computer Society’s Harry M. Goode Award in 1965 The prize citation noted his “pioneering efforts in automatic computing” and specifically mentioned his independent use of binary arithmetic and floating-point methods.
Beyond hardware, Zuse’s Plankalkül influenced the idea of higher-level programming. Though it was not implemented in his time, it showed that one could write abstract instructions for a machine, separated from wiring or low-level circuits. This concept became central to modern software. Zuse even wrote out chess programs in Plankalkül as a proof of concept (anticipating the later field of computer chess. In theoretical terms, Zuse is sometimes credited with founding “digital physics.” His 1969 work Calculating Space predated and inspired later efforts to model the universe as an information-processing system. Scientists like Stephen Wolfram and Ed Fredkin have acknowledged Zuse as a pioneer in viewing physical laws through a computational lens.
Critiques
From a historical viewpoint, some have argued that Zuse’s wartime work had little direct impact on later computer designs. Because Germany was fighting the war, Zuse had no peers outside the Axis powers. Allied scientists learned about his machines only after 1945, if at all. As one historian summed up, Zuse “conceived all the elements of the computer sooner and more elegantly than any other pioneer, but was living in Germany when the country was on the path to self-destruction” In practice, this meant his Z1–Z4 were essentially unknown to the designers of ENIAC, COLOSSUS, UNIVAC and other early postwar computers. His ideas were rediscovered too late to influence the mainstream designs of the 1940s and 1950s.
Zuse himself felt the sting of this lack of recognition. He insisted he was the rightful inventor of the programmable computer. He pointed out, for instance, that ENIAC used 18,000 tubes whereas his Z3 did similar work much more economically. But in legal and technical circles he received little credit. A German patent office in 1967 refused his patent application for the Z3, ruling that it lacked novelty (“inventiveness”) – despite the fact the delay in examining it was caused by the war and industry lobbying Zuse remained somewhat bitter: he often noted that he was “the inventor of the computer,” while some historians relegated his work to a mere footnote in computing history.
Today, of course, historians take a more balanced view. They acknowledge that American and British efforts were largely independent of Zuse’s, but also that Zuse solved key problems (binary logic, program control, floating point) on his own. He is generally ranked alongside figures like Charles Babbage, Alan Turing and John von Neumann as one of the early computer visionaries, even if his influence was indirect.
Legacy
Konrad Zuse died in 1995 in Hünfeld, Germany. In the decades since, his reputation has grown. He is celebrated especially in his homeland as the “father of the computer.” In 1984 the Zuse Institute Berlin (ZIB) was founded and named in his honor; it is now a leading German computing research center. Throughout Germany one finds tributes: schools, streets and awards bear his name. Notably, the German Computer Society (Gesellschaft für Informatik) awards the Konrad Zuse Medal as its highest honor to outstanding computer scientists The 100th anniversary of Zuse’s birth in 2010 was marked by conferences, museum exhibitions and media features across Germany.
Several of Zuse’s original machines (or their reconstructions) survive as museum exhibits. A replica of the Z1 is on display in the Deutsches Museum in Munich and a copy of the Z3 is shown in Munich’s Museum of the History of Computers. The Z4, Zuse’s only completely wartime-surviving machine, resides at ETH Zurich, where it was installed in 1950. These exhibits remind visitors that as early as 1941 a German engineer operating in a small workshop had already built a device as capable as the computing giants of the later 1940s.
In retrospection, many now say that Zuse solved the key elements of the modern computer “sooner and more elegantly” than anyone else, even if historical circumstance kept him in the wings Computing history classes routinely credit him with building the first working programmable machine. His name appears in standard accounts of computing’s origins, and he is accorded a place beside other pioneers. His companies and documentation (later acquired by museums) helped establish computer industry in postwar Germany. In summary, Konrad Zuse’s legacy is that of a brilliant, independent-minded inventor who imagined the concept of a computer, realized it in hardware and software form, and laid groundwork for the digital world that followed.
Selected Works
- Z1 (1936–1938) – Prototype mechanical computer using binary arithmetic and punched tape (demonstrated 1938, not fully reliable).
- Z2 (circa 1940) – Improved experimental computer; arithmetic unit built from telephone relays, memory from the Z1.
- Z3 (1940–1941) – First working programmable electromechanical computer. It used ~2600 relays to perform floating-point calculations and read instructions from punched tape. (Destroyed in 1943; a replica stands in Munich.)
- Z4 (1942–1945; en route to operational by 1950) – Wartime design that became Europe’s only working computer immediately postwar. Moved to Switzerland and used at ETH Zurich from 1950.
- S1 and S2 (1943–1944) – Special-purpose computing machines for aircraft engineering. The S2 included built-in measurement sensors for feeding data into calculations.
- L1 (1944) – Experimental logic solver machine (not completed), intended for automated logical reasoning.
- Plankalkül (1943–1945) – An algorithmic programming notation developed by Zuse (unpublished in wartime). Plankalkül introduced ideas like loops, conditional branches and array variables. An English translation was finally published in 1972.
- “Rechnender Raum” (1959–1969) – Book Calculating Space (first German edition 1969, English 1970) describing his theory of the universe as a computational system. This work influenced later concepts in cellular automata and digital physics.
- Der Computer – Mein Lebenswerk (1970) – Zuse’s autobiographical book, outlining his life’s work and vision for computing.