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Was Zuse's Z3 the First Programmable Computer?
Roland Piquepaille writes "Several years before the Colossus in the U.K. and the ENIAC in the U.S., the Z3, built by Konrad Zuse in 1941, was crunching numbers in Germany. In a short article, the Register reports on allegations that the Z3 was the first programmable computer. Based on a binary floating-point number and switching system, it had all the attributes of today's computers, such as a control block, a memory, and a calculator. But it didn't have the ability to store the program in the memory together with the data because the memory was too small. It had a 64-word memory of 22 bits each and was able to handle four additions per second and to do a multiplication in about five seconds. And it was pretty big: five meters long, two meters high, and 80 centimeters wide. It was destroyed during WWII, and later rebuilt in 1960/1961. You'll find more details, pictures and references in this analysis of this ancestor of modern computing. [Additional note: you can find other references to the Z3, Colossus and Eniac computers in this former Slashdot item, posted in October 2000.]"
I find mechanical computers very interesting. I was browsing the web a few days ago and some guy built a differentiator, integrator, and summer based on some pneumatic system. Very cool.
Building something like this could be a really cool high school science project.
Evolution or ID?
Which was the first computer? Does it really matter? I mean, honestly, why bicker about minor points in history?
Just say the Z3 was the first german, ENIAC was the first US, etc...
Who cares who was first... what really matters is what we do now and in the future.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
Babbage's Analytical Engine (which first computer programmer was Ada Byron, daughter of Lord Byron).
I DO happen to think that Zuse should get credit for the first computer. I remember hearing all that historical stuff about who made the first computer. But then I read what Zuse had accomplished and when he did it. His concepts were way ahead of everyone else. He basically invented the programmable computer. No, its not just like the architecture of our computers today, but he certainly laid the foundation - or would have had his research been shared.
The crazy thing is that he developed all his ideas and machines isolated from the rest of the western world due to the Nazis. That to me is even more incredible. Give him a trophy.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
I've always wondered what the Nazis would have accomplished if Hitler and his henchmen had been slightly more practical minded and had:
(1) Let the generals run the combat. AFAIK there were several opportunities to either retreat and regroup or to give up ground to assist other units that could have actually won the Eastern Front.
(2) Made the Final Solution a post-war ambition. There were a lot of resources wasted on the Death Camps and other essentially political/sociological obsessions. Not only did this limit Nazi Germany's resources, but it limited their access to a large segment of educated people.
There's probably a mildly entertaining alt-history story about a Nazi government that decides to pursue its racial ambitions after it conquers Russia and England and so succeeds due to the reallocation of resources.
But when executable code is stored in memory it can be written too, enabling useful things like compilers...
I'm not sure I agree with the poster that this is a defining characteristic of a 'computer', but the von Neumann architecture was a fundamental step in modern computation.
Given that the machine could not store its program as well as the data I would say no, but it's a nice try for the number one spot. The German machine is also IMHO a better machine than ENIAC as ENIAC had to be reprogrammed by almost completely rebuilding the machine.
Sorry folks, but the first true computer was (and still is) the Manchester University Mark 1.
Ed Almos
Budapest, Hungary
The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws. - Tacitus, 56-120 A.D.
The Z machines and their inventor are also mentioned in a beautiful book, most suitable for geek coffee tables everywhere - "Computers: An Illustrated History" (direct Amazon UK link).
A suitable Father's day present if he's a geek too?
This is not a sig
what unsubstantiated claims? Some rebuild of it stands in the German Museum in Munic for decades.
There have even been java-applets simulating it for years. Just because you didn't know it, it is
no rewriting of history. Calling something else but the Z3 the first computer would be rewriting of history.
(Next time you want to tell be Edison invented the light bulb)
> Zuse also developed the first multi-purpose computing language 'Plankalkul' too.
And he wrote a chess program in this language, before he actually had a machine to run it on.
> Sounds awfully familiar right now...
He, he, I wasn't going to say that. I was going to say though that it had a lot in common with the communist block in that respect. The Soviets refrained from taking on the rest of the world in all out war, so their system lasted just a tad longer. But it also never reached self-sustaining critical mass, and it eventually imploded. That has to be said with all the credit being heaped upon the Big Gipper at the moment for having "won" the Cold War.
I wasn't around during the Nazi rule in Germany. I wasn't around in 1971 when that general-interest computer book came out. I don't have any recollection of any at-length discussions of the Z3.
I guess as a person interested in history I found it midly interesting. Then again as my father always said, "Show me what happened yesterday and I don't give a shit but show me what happens tomorrow and then I will be more than interested."
Let the generals run the combat. AFAIK there were several opportunities to either retreat and regroup or to give up ground to assist other units that could have actually won the Eastern Front.
Lets see, a country the size of Texas with little more than twice the population with limited natural resources such as petroleum, was able to fight the WHOLE WORLD for six years. They even lasted nearly a whole year when most of their major cities had been reduced to rubble, inflicting massive civilian casualities the likes of which were unknown in the rest of Western Europe. What would have happened if the moment Britain and France declared war on Germany for reclaiming their lost territory they just gassed London and Paris, and killed everyone there. Or maybe Moscow.
Remember, Germany was able to successfully fight for those six years WITHOUT resorting to massive targetting of civilian population centers.
There were a lot of resources wasted on the Death Camps and other essentially political/sociological obsessions.
What kind of resources? The singular greatest argument against the existence of those death camps as you put is fuel. The only reason fuel is said to have been used was to creamate the victims since mass graves hold 200,000-300,000 dead at the most. The problem is these same people claim the holocaust didn't happen until 1943, AFTER Stalingrad when the fuel shortage was become quite critical. It simply doesn't make sense.
Not only did this limit Nazi Germany's resources, but it limited their access to a large segment of educated people.
What sort of educated people? You mean the Jews? You mean 1-2% of Germany's population? most of whom were forced to emigrate before the war began? I would hardly call that a large segment, and even without them they developed practically every modern weapon of war which even today stands as the founding model. Israel seems to get along today just fine without the help of the 100 million muslims in their neighborhood. When you are pursuing an ethnic state you have to make some sacrifices. Germany made them, and Israel makes them today.
Germany's problem was not lack of educated people, it was lack of workers and lack of soldiers.
I don't read or respond to AC posts
True enough- though this was more like 4 flops (an add instruction every quarter of a second). I know a few little kids who are that fast, at least for under 4-bit numbers. Then they discover calculators and lose the ability.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
After that pointless "what if" debate is over some of you might be interested to know that there is a functional replica of the Z3 in the "Deutsches Museum" in Munich. It's quite cool to listen to the 5Hz Clock and "hear" it calculate. See http://www.deutsches-museum.de/ausstell/dauer/info rm/infor3.htm at the bottom of the page (it's in German, sorry).
The first recorded programmable computer systems I am aware of that had control structures (loop count) were loom machines which while never used von-neumann style (humans punched the instructions the machine didnt weave new tapes) had the basics we consider today although very ad-hoc since they were built for real work rather than by computability theorists.
Selecting a "first" is extremely hard. If your definition is turing completeness then speech is turning complete so people probably win (although I'll leave turning completeness of animal brains to someone who knows more about the field 8)).
Personally I think that like a lot of other things in the universe there isn't a first because it evolved step by step.
Alan
Similar to how most of us learned about Columbus in elementary(to justify the holiday) and then later learned about the "native" americans coming across the land bridge from the west, and the vikings coming from the east long before Columbus. Part of the cause simply seems to be that the truth is complicated, and teachers want to simplify things for young minds. Now if the teachers are simplifying too much due to laziness or their own ignorance or indoctrinations(read creationism), I can see where there is a problem.
But those problems seem to be less and less in our information age. If someone tells you something that sounds like an urban legend, you can look it up and most likely easily find a reputable source that it has been well debunked.
We still have a ways to go. It's not always easy. The other day, either in #world-relations or #politics on freenode, some guy was trying to tell me that the literacy rate of iraqi women was ~75% in 1987, and now it is around 24%. He gave as his source a 'human rights watch' webpage which claimed UNESCO as their source. I was still incredulous so I found a source for actual UNESCO numbers, and it turns out UNESCO reported a 76% illiteracy rate of iraqi women in '87 which jibed more accurately with the factbook numbers.
It is awesome how easy it is to do research like that in this day and age and have it sparked by a debate between people across the world from each other.
I think that if we can teach our kids to be incredulous once in a while, research whatever they are interested in, keep as much information uncensored as possible, and give everyone the means to learn it, then the human race might actually have a chance. We won't have too worry much about the occasional nationalistic bending of facts told to children, either.
I don't know where that verbosity came from. I can't sleep, ;)