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Konrad Zuse

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Konrad Ernst Otto Zuse (Template:IPAc-en;<ref>Template:YouTube</ref> {{#invoke:IPA|main}}; 22 June 1910 – 18 December 1995) was a German civil engineer, pioneering computer scientist, inventor and businessman. His greatest achievement was the world's first programmable computer; the functional program-controlled Turing-complete Z3 became operational in May 1941. Thanks to this machine and its predecessors, Zuse is regarded by some as the inventor and father of the modern computer.<ref name=Rojas1>Template:Cite journal</ref><ref name=Flippo>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name=von_Leszczynski>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref name=Bellis>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Zuse was noted for the S2 computing machine, considered the first process control computer. In 1941, he founded one of the earliest computer businesses, producing the Z4, which became the world's first commercial computer.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> From 1943<ref>Zuse, Konrad (1943), "Ansätze einer Theorie des allgemeinen Rechnens unter besonderer Berücksichtigung des Aussagenkalküls und dessen Anwendung auf Relaisschaltungen" [Inception of a universal theory of computation with special consideration of the propositional calculus and its application to relay circuits], unpublished manuscript, Zuse Papers 045/018.</ref> to 1945<ref>A book on the subject: (full text of the 1945 manuscript) Template:Webarchive</ref> he designed Plankalkül, the first high-level programming language.<ref name="HZ2010-11-18"/> In 1969, Zuse suggested the concept of a computation-based universe in his book {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Calculating Space).<ref name="Zuse_1967_RR"/><ref name="Zuse_1969_RR"/><ref name="MIT_1970_RR"/>

Much of his early work was financed by his family and commerce, but after 1939 he was given resources by the government of Nazi Germany.<ref name="books.google.com">"Weapons Grade: How Modern Warfare Gave Birth To Our High-Tech World", David Hambling. Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2006. Template:ISBN, Template:ISBN. Retrieved 14 March 2010.</ref> Due to World War II, Zuse's work went largely unnoticed in the United Kingdom and United States. Possibly his first documented influence on a US company was IBM's option on his patents in 1946.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The Z4 also served as the inspiration for the construction of the ERMETH, the first Swiss computer and one of the first in Europe.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Early life and educationEdit

Konrad Zuse was born in Berlin on 22 June 1910.<ref name="Guardian">Template:Cite news</ref> In 1912, his family moved to East Prussian Braunsberg (now Braniewo in Poland), where his father was a postal clerk. Zuse attended the Collegium Hosianum in Braunsberg, and in 1923, the family moved to Hoyerswerda, where he passed his Abitur in 1928, qualifying him to enter university.Template:Cn

He enrolled at Technische Hochschule Berlin (now Technische Universität Berlin) and explored both engineering and architecture, but found them boring. Zuse then pursued civil engineering, graduating in 1935.<ref name="Guardian"/>

CareerEdit

After graduation, Zuse worked for the Ford Motor Company, using his artistic skills in the design of advertisements.<ref name="HZ2010-11-18">Talk given by Horst Zuse to the Computer Conservation Society at the Science Museum (London) on 18 November 2010</ref> He started work as a design engineer at the Henschel aircraft factory in Schönefeld near Berlin. This required the performance of many routine calculations by hand, leading him to theorize and plan a way of doing them by machine.<ref name=LeeComputerorg>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Beginning in 1935, he experimented in the construction of computers in his parents' flat on {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} 38, moving with them into their new flat on {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} 10, the street leading up the Kreuzberg, Berlin.<ref name="Spode_1994"/>Template:Rp Working in his parents' apartment in 1936, he produced his first attempt, the Z1, a floating-point binary mechanical calculator with limited programmability, reading instructions from a perforated 35 mm film.<ref name="HZ2010-11-18"/>

File:Zuse Z1-2.jpg
Zuse Z1 replica in the German Museum of Technology in Berlin

In 1937, Zuse submitted two patents that anticipated a von Neumann architecture. In 1938, he finished the Z1 which contained some 30,000 metal parts and never worked well due to insufficient mechanical precision. On 30 January 1944, the Z1 and its original blueprints were destroyed with his parents' flat and many neighbouring buildings by a British air raid in World War II.<ref name="Spode_1994"/>Template:Rp

Zuse completed his work entirely independently of other leading computer scientists and mathematicians of his day. Between 1936 and 1945, he was in near-total intellectual isolation.<ref>"Konrad Zuse" Template:Webarchive, Gap System. Retrieved 14 March 2010.</ref>

1939–1945Edit

File:2007-01-20 Gedenktafel Zuse Z3.jpg
lang}} 7, Berlin

In 1939, Zuse was called to military service, where he was given the resources to ultimately build the Z2.<ref name="books.google.com"/> In September 1940 Zuse presented the Z2, covering several rooms in the parental flat, to experts of the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (DVL; German Research Institute for Aviation).<ref name="Spode_1994"/>Template:Rp The Z2 was a revised version of the Z1 using telephone relays.

In 1940, the German government began funding him and his company through the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (AVA, Aerodynamic Research Institute, forerunner of the DLR),<ref>"Mathematicians during the Third Reich and World War II", Technical University of Munich. Retrieved 14 March 2010.</ref> 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.<ref name="Zuse_1993"/>Template:Rp

In 1941 Zuse started a company, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (Zuse Apparatus Construction), to manufacture his machines,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> renting a workshop on the opposite side in {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} 7 and stretching through the block to {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} 29 (renamed and renumbered as Mehringdamm 84 in 1947).<ref name="Spode_1994"/>Template:Rp

In 1941, he improved on the basic Z2 machine, and built the Z3. On 12 May 1941 Zuse presented the Z3, built in his workshop, to the public.<ref name="Spode_1994"/>Template:Rp<ref name="Chod 2003 52">Kathrin Chod, Herbert Schwenk and Hainer Weißpflug, Berliner Bezirkslexikon: Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, Berlin: Haude & Spener / Edition Luisenstadt, 2003, p. 52. Template:ISBN.</ref> The Z3 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. However, Turing-completeness was never considered by Zuse (who was unaware of Turing's work and had practical applications in mind) and only demonstrated in 1998 (see History of computing hardware).

The Z3, the first fully operational electromechanical computer, was partially financed by German government-supported DVL, which wanted their extensive calculations automated. A request by his co-worker Helmut Schreyer—who had helped Zuse build the Z3 prototype in 1938<ref>St. Amant, Kirk; Still, Brian. Handbook of research on open source software Idea Group. 2007. Template:ISBN. Retrieved 14 March 2010.</ref>—for government funding for an electronic successor to the Z3 was denied as "strategically unimportant".

File:KZuse denkmal.jpg
Statue of Zuse in Bad Hersfeld

In 1937, Schreyer had advised Zuse to use vacuum tubes as switching elements; Zuse at this time considered it a "crazy idea" ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}} in his own words). Zuse's workshop on {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} 7 (along with the Z3) was destroyed in an Allied Air raid in late 1943 and the parental flat with Z1 and Z2 on 30 January the following year, whereas the successor Z4, which Zuse had begun constructing in 1942<ref name="Zuse_1993"/>Template:Rp in new premises in the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} on {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} 6, remained intact.<ref name="Spode_1994"/>Template:Rp

On 3 February 1945, aerial bombing caused devastating destruction in the Luisenstadt, the area around {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, including neighbouring houses.<ref name="Selig_2011"/> This event effectively brought Zuse's research and development to a complete halt. The partially finished, telephone relay-based Z4 computer was then packed and moved from Berlin on 14 February, arriving in Göttingen approximately two weeks later.<ref name="Spode_1994"/>Template:Rp

These machines contributed to the Henschel Werke Hs 293 and Hs 294 guided missiles developed by the German military between 1941 and 1945, which were the precursors to the modern cruise missile.<ref name="Zuse_1993"/>Template:Rp<ref>"Germany's Secret Weapons in World War II", Roger Ford. Zenith Imprint, 2000. Template:ISBN, Template:ISBN. Retrieved 14 March 2010.</ref><ref>"The S1 and S2 Computing Machines — Konrad Zuse´s Work for the German Military 1941–1945", Atypon Link. Retrieved 14 March 2010.</ref> The circuit design of the S1 was the predecessor of Zuse's Z11.<ref name="Zuse_1993"/>Template:Rp Zuse believed that these machines had been captured by occupying Soviet troops in 1945.<ref name="Zuse_1993"/>Template:Rp

While working on his Z4 computer, Zuse realised that programming in machine code was too complicated. He started working on a PhD thesis<ref>Konrad Zuse: Der Plankalkül Template:Webarchive. PhD thesis, 1945</ref> detailing the first high-level programming language, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} ("Plan Calculus") and, as an elaborate example program, the first real computer chess engine.<ref name=knuthpardo>Knuth & Pardo: The early development of programming languages. In Nicholas Metropolis (Ed): History of Computing in the Twentieth Century, p. 203.</ref>

1945–1995Edit

After the 1945 Luisenstadt bombing, he fled from Berlin to the rural Allgäu.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In the extreme deprivation of post-war Germany Zuse was unable to build computers.

Zuse founded one of the earliest computer companies: the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}. Capital was raised in 1946 through ETH Zurich and an IBM option on Zuse's patents.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

In 1947, according to the memoirs of the German computer pioneer Heinz Billing from the Max Planck Institute for Physics, there was a meeting between Alan Turing and Konrad Zuse in Göttingen.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> The encounter had the form of a colloquium. Participants were Womersley, Turing, Porter from England and a few German researchers like Zuse, Walther, and Billing. (For more details see Herbert Bruderer, {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}).

It was not until 1949 that Zuse was able to resume work on the Z4. He would show the computer to the mathematician Eduard Stiefel of the ETH Zurich. The two men settled a deal to lend the Z4 to the ETH.<ref name="Lippe_2007">{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

File:Zuse-Werkstatt-Neukirchen-Jan-2010.jpg
Zuse's workshop at Neukirchen, 2010

In November 1949, Zuse founded another company, Zuse KG, in Haunetal-Neukirchen; in 1957, the company's head office moved to Bad Hersfeld. The Z4 was finished and delivered to the ETH Zurich in July 1950, where it proved very reliable.<ref name="HZ2010-11-18" /> At that time, it was the only working digital computer in Central Europe,<ref>Bruderer (2021), p. 1098</ref> and the second computer in the world to be sold or loaned, beaten only by the BINAC, which never worked properly after it was delivered. Other computers, all numbered with a leading Z, up to Z43,<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }} Horst Zuse, EPE Online, archived on 11 May 2009 from the original Template:Webarchive</ref> 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.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }} Horst Zuse, EPE Online, archived on 29 June 2009 from the original Template:Webarchive</ref>

Unable to do any hardware development, he continued working on {{#invoke:Lang|lang}}, eventually publishing some brief excerpts of his thesis in 1948 and 1959; the work in its entirety, however, remained unpublished until 1972.<ref name="knuthpardo"/> The PhD thesis was submitted at University of Augsburg, but it was rejected because Zuse forgot to pay the DM 400 university enrollment fee. The rejection did not bother him.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

{{#invoke:Lang|lang}} slightly influenced the design of ALGOL 58<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> but was itself implemented only in 1975 in a dissertation by Joachim Hohmann.<ref>Joachim Hohmann: Der Plankalkül im Vergleich mit algorithmischen Sprachen. Reihe Informatik und Operations Research, S. Toeche-Mittler Verlag, Darmstadt 1979, Template:ISBN.</ref> Heinz Rutishauser, one of the inventors of ALGOL, 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." Further implementations followed in 1998 and then in 2000 by a team from the Free University of Berlin. Donald Knuth suggested a thought experiment: What might have happened had the bombing not taken place, and had the PhD thesis accordingly been published as planned?<ref name=knuthpardo/>Template:Relevant

File:Zuse Z64 Graphomat.jpg
Z64 Graphomat plotter

In 1956, Zuse began to work on a high precision, large format plotter. It was demonstrated at the 1961 Hanover Fair,<ref name=HorstZuse>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> and became well known also outside of the technical world thanks to Frieder Nake's pioneering computer art work.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> Other plotters designed by Zuse include the ZUSE Z90 and ZUSE Z9004.<ref name=HorstZuse/>

File:Digitalteilchen.svg
An elementary process in Zuse's Calculating Space: Two digital particles A and B form a new digital particle C.<ref>Rechnender Raum (PDF), Elektronische Datenverarbeitung, 8: 336–344, 1967.</ref>

In 1967, Zuse suggested that the universe itself is running on a cellular automaton or similar computational structure (digital physics); in 1969, he published the book {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} (translated into English as Calculating Space).<ref name="Zuse_1967_RR"/><ref name="Zuse_1969_RR"/><ref name="MIT_1970_RR"/>

Template:AnchorBetween 1989 and 1995, Zuse conceptualized and created a purely mechanical, extensible, modular tower automaton he named "helix tower" ({{#invoke:Lang|lang}}). The structure is based on a gear drive that employs rotary motion (e.g. provided by a crank) to assemble modular components from a storage space, elevating a tube-shaped tower; the process is reversible, and inverting the input direction will deconstruct the tower and store the components. In 2009, the {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} restored Zuse's original 1:30 functional model that can be extended to a height of 2.7 m.<ref name="DM_2015"/> Zuse intended the full construction to reach a height of 120 m, and envisioned it for use with wind power generators and radio transmission installations.<ref name="Eibisch_2009"/><ref name="Bock-Eibisch_2010"/><ref name="Böttiger_2011"/><ref name="Eibisch_2016"/>

Between 1987 and 1989, Zuse recreated the Z1, suffering a heart attack midway through the project. It cost 800,000 DM (approximately $500,000) and required four individuals (including Zuse) to assemble it. Funding for this retrocomputing project was provided by Siemens and a consortium of five companies.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>

Personal lifeEdit

File:Konrad Zuse Denkmal im Huenfelder Stadtpark.JPG
Zuse Memorial in Hünfeld, Hesse

Konrad Zuse married Gisela Brandes in January 1945, employing a carriage, himself dressed in tailcoat and top hat and with Gisela in a wedding veil, for Zuse attached importance to a "noble ceremony". Their son Horst, the first of five children, was born in November 1945.

While Zuse never became a member of the Nazi Party, he is not known to have expressed any doubts or qualms about working for the Nazi war effort. Much later, he suggested that in modern times, the best scientists and engineers usually have to choose between either doing their work for more or less questionable business and military interests in a Faustian bargain, or not pursuing their line of work at all.<ref name="Zuse_1984"/>

After Zuse retired, he focused on his hobby of painting.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He signed his paintings as "Kuno [von und zu] See".

Zuse was an atheist.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref><ref name="Zuse_1993"/>Template:Rp

Zuse died on 18 December 1995 in Hünfeld, Hesse (near Fulda) from heart failure.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Awards and honoursEdit

File:Zuse Z31.jpg
Magnetic drum storage inside a Z31 (which was first displayed in 1963)

Zuse received several awards for his work:

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The Zuse Institute Berlin is named in his honour.

The Konrad Zuse Medal of the Gesellschaft für Informatik, and the Konrad Zuse Medal of the Zentralverband des Deutschen Baugewerbes (Central Association of German Construction), are both named after Zuse.

A replica of the Z3, as well as the original Z4, is in the Deutsches Museum in Munich. The {{#invoke:Lang|lang}} in Berlin has an exhibition devoted to Zuse, displaying twelve of his machines, including a replica of the Z1 and several of Zuse's paintings.

The 100th anniversary of his birth was celebrated by exhibitions, lectures and workshops.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Zuse-Jahr 2010 – zum 100. Geburtstag des Computerpioniers Konrad Zuse Deutsches Technikmuseum Berlin, 19 April 2010 Template:In lang</ref>

See alsoEdit

ReferencesEdit

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Further readingEdit

External linksEdit

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