German computer scientist and engineer (1910–1995)
"Zuse" redirects here. For Konrad Zuse's son, see Horst Zuse. For the institute, see Zuse Institute Berlin.
"Helixturm" redirects here. For the lighthouse in Cologne, see Heliosturm.
Konrad Zuse
Konrad Zuse in 1992
Born
Konrad Ernst Otto Zuse
(1910-06-22)22 June 1910
Berlin, Prussia, German Empire
Died
18 December 1995(1995-12-18) (aged 85)
Hünfeld, Hesse, Germany
Alma mater
Technical University of Berlin
Known for
Z3, Z4
Plankalkül
Calculating Space (cf. digital physics)
Montagestraße SRS 72[2]
Helixturm[3][4][2]
Awards
Werner von Siemens Ring in 1964
Harry H. Goode Memorial Award in 1965 (together with George Stibitz)
Wilhelm Exner Medal, 1969[1]
Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1972
Computer History Museum Fellow Award in 1999
Scientific career
Fields
Computer science
Computer engineering
Institutions
Aerodynamic Research Institute
Signature
Konrad Ernst Otto Zuse (German:[ˈkɔnʁaːtˈtsuːzə]; 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.[5][6][7][8][9][10]
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.[11] From 1943[12] to 1945[13] he designed Plankalkül, the first high-level programming language.[14] In 1969, Zuse suggested the concept of a computation-based universe in his book Rechnender Raum (Calculating Space).[15][16][17]
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.[18] 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.[19]
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^Rojas, Raúl (1997). "Konrad Zuse's Legacy: The Architecture of the Z1 and Z3" (PDF). IEEE Annals of the History of Computing. 19 (2): 5–16. doi:10.1109/85.586067. Archived (PDF) from the original on 26 April 2021. Retrieved 12 May 2021. Konrad Zuse is popularly recognized in Germany as the father of the computer, and his Z1, a programmable automaton built from 1936 to 1938, has been called the first computer in the world. Other nations reserve this honor for one of their own scientists, and there has been a long and often acrimonious debate on the issue of who is the true inventor of the computer.
^Flippo, Hyde. "Konrad Zuse: The first programmable, digital computer". german-way.com. The German Way & More. Archived from the original on 31 May 2013. The German civil engineer Konrad Zuse is considered the inventor of the first digital and programmable computers
^von Leszczynski, Ulrike (27 June 2010). "Z like Zuse: German inventor of the computer". monstersandcritics.com. Deutsche Presse-Agentur. Archived from the original on 22 May 2013. Retrieved 22 May 2013. There's strong evidence that [Zuse] built the world's first computer in Berlin.
^Bellis, Mary (15 May 2019) [First published 2006 at inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa050298.htm]. "Biography of Konrad Zuse, Inventor and Programmer of Early Computers". thoughtco.com. Dotdash Meredith. Archived from the original on 13 December 2020. Retrieved 3 February 2021. Konrad Zuse earned the semiofficial title of 'inventor of the modern computer'
^"Who is the Father of the Computer?".
^Bruderer, Herbert (2021). Milestones in Analog and Digital Computing (3rd ed.). Springer. pp. 13, 961. ISBN 978-3030409739.
^Bruderer, Herbert (2021). Milestones in Analog and Digital Computing (3rd ed.). Springer. p. 14. ISBN 978-3030409739.
^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.
^A book on the subject: (full text of the 1945 manuscript) Archived 10 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine
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^"Weapons Grade: How Modern Warfare Gave Birth To Our High-Tech World", David Hambling. Carroll & Graf Publishers, 2006. ISBN 0-7867-1769-6, ISBN 978-0-7867-1769-9. Retrieved 14 March 2010.
^Schmidhuber, Jürgen (19 August 2021). "1941: Konrad Zuse completes the first working general-purpose computer, based on his 1936 patent application". Universita della Svizzera Italiana.
Konrad Ernst Otto Zuse (German: [ˈkɔnʁaːt ˈtsuːzə]; 22 June 1910 – 18 December 1995) was a German civil engineer, pioneering computer scientist, inventor...
The KonradZuse Medal for Services to Computer Science is the highest award of the Gesellschaft für Informatik (German Computer Science Society), given...
notion of computation is essentially unique. In 1941 KonradZuse completed the Z3 computer. Zuse was not familiar with Turing's work on computability...
The Zuse Institute Berlin (abbreviated ZIB, or Konrad-Zuse-Zentrum für Informationstechnik Berlin) is a research institute for applied mathematics and...
experienced the algorithm in action. In 1941, German civil engineer KonradZuse was the first person to execute a program on a working, program-controlled...
his chief engineer and inadequate funding. It was not until 1941 that KonradZuse built the first general-purpose computer, Z3, more than a century after...
2010. Retrieved 7 January 2014. Zuse, Horst. "Part 4: KonradZuse's Z1 and Z3 Computers". The Life and Work of KonradZuse. EPE Online. Archived from the...
became known as the von Neumann architecture, others before him, such as KonradZuse, had suggested and implemented similar ideas. The so-called Harvard architecture...
The hypothesis that the universe is a digital computer was proposed by KonradZuse in his 1969 book Rechnender Raum ("Calculating-space"). The term digital...
KonradZuse Program is one-year fellowship for ICT entrepreneurs, supported from the Federal Foreign Office of Germany and the German Investment and Development...
though it long remained essentially unknown outside of Germany, was KonradZuse's Z3 in 1941 as well as his Z4 in 1945. The reverse Polish scheme was...
England and a few German researchers like Zuse, Walther, and Billing (for more details see Herbert Bruderer, KonradZuse und die Schweiz). In 1948, Turing was...
Calculating Space (German: Rechnender Raum) is KonradZuse's 1969 book on automata theory. He proposed that all processes in the universe are computational...
Horst Zuse (born November 17, 1945) is a German computer scientist. Horst Zuse was born in 1945 as the son of the computer pioneer KonradZuse. He first...
the first fully functional programmable (electromechanical) computer, KonradZuse, and ten Nobel Prize laureates. TU Berlin is a member of TU9, an incorporated...
tube) respectively; Hans Geiger, the creator of the Geiger counter; and KonradZuse, who built the first fully automatic digital computer (Z3) and the first...
of describing chemical processes. In 1941, his father told him about KonradZuse's work on computing machines and Carl Adam started building his own analog...
Krailling is a municipality in the district of Starnberg in Bavaria, Germany. The folk actor Gustl Bayrhammer (1922-1993) died in Krailling and was buried...
The first high-level programming language was Plankalkül, created by KonradZuse between 1942 and 1945. The first high-level language to have an associated...
on 17–18 May 1990. "Der Freiburger Code auf der Zuse" (in German). Retrieved 26 October 2014. H. Zuse. "Z22". Retrieved 26 October 2014. Smillie, Keith...
algorithms he has received many awards, including the Cantor medal, the KonradZuse Medal, the Paris Kanellakis Award for work on randomized primality testing...
describing the analytical engine. While building the computer Z1 in 1936, KonradZuse described in two patent applications for his future projects that machine...