Konrad Zuse

Konrad Zuse (June 22, 1910 - December 18, 1995) was a German engineer and computer pioneer.

Born in Berlin, Germany, Zuse graduated in engineering from the Technische Hochschule Berlin-Charlottenburg (today the Technische Universität Berlin or Technical University of Berlin[?]) in 1935. He started work at the Henschel aircraft factory in Dessau, but only one year later he resigned from his job to build a programmable machine. In 1938, his first attempt, called the Z1, was a binary electrically driven mechanical calculator with limited programmability, reading instructions from punched tape. The Z1 never worked well, though, due to the lack of sufficiently precise parts.

World War II made it impossible and undesirable for Zuse and contemporary computer scientists in the UK and the USA to work together, or even to stay in contact. In 1939, Zuse was called for military service but was able to convince the army to let him return to building his computers. In 1940, he gained support from the Aerodynamische Versuchsanstalt (AVA, Aerodynamic Research Institute), which used his work for the production of guided missiles. Zuse built the Z2, a revised version of his machine, from telephone relays. The same year, he started a company, Zuse Apparatebau, to manufacture his programmable machines.

Satisfied with the function of the basic Z2[?] machine, he built the Z3 in 1941. It was a binary calculator featuring limited programmability, with memory and a calculation unit based on telephone relays. Calculations could be specified in advance, however conditional jumps and loops were not available. The Z3 touched the borderline to being a Turing-complete computer; its Turing-completeness was never envisioned by Zuse and only proven in 1998. (See History of computing)

Zuse's company was destroyed in 1945 by an Allied attack, together with the Z3. The partially finished, relay-based Z4 had been brought to a safe place earlier. Zuse also developed the first high-level programming language, the Plankalkül in 1945, for which no compiler or interpreter was available until 2000.

Zuse founded another company, Zuse KG, in 1949. The Z4[?] was finished and delivered to the ETH Zürich[?], Switzerland in September, 1950. At that time, it was the only working computer in continental Europe, and the first computer in the world to be sold, beating the Ferranti Mark I[?] by five months and the UNIVAC I by ten months. Other computers, all numbered with a leading Z, 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 the Siemens AG company. Zuse received several awards for his work. After he retired, he focused on his hobby, painting. Zuse died December 18, 1995 in Hünfeld[?], Germany.

External Links

• MacTutor biography (http://www-history.mcs.st-andrews.ac.uk/history/Mathematicians/Zuse)
• Konrad Zuse Internet Archive (http://www.zib.de/zuse/English_Version/index)
• Technical University of Berlin (http://www.tu-berlin.de/)
• The Life and Work of Konrad Zuse, by Prof. Horst Zuse (http://www.epemag.com/zuse) An extensive and well written historical account of what can arguably be called the worlds first working computer.
• Konrad Zuse (http://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Zuse)