Slashdot Mirror
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.]"
Too bad this bad-boy's not around anymore, I'd give anything to see the Linux port.
At least Zuse went to work with the allies instead of the Soviets after the war.
what a shame, the soviets being such an integral part of the allied forces!
> Except your doorknob doesn't manipulate data, thus, not a computer.
A doorknob manipulates data in the most general sense, because it has to transform a rotational measurement into a decision about unlatching the door.
My point was that when we talk about computers, we don't mean manipulating data in the most general sense. We mean "special" manipulations. The Turing Machine abstraction allows us to define exactly what a "special" manipulation is.
> V1 used fixed wings for lift, yet it was a jet-powered missile.
The V1 was more of an early cruise missile, which is a separate category that combines some characteristics of missiles and airplanes.
> But maybe the "jet" requirement wasn't so good. How about "pressurized cabin."
Again, you are picking things which are not part of the definition of an airplane to claim that the Wright Flyer is not an airplane. That would be like saying that the Z3 is not a computer because it doesn't have a mouse.
I am trying to show that the term "computer" is more specific than "calculator", at least in the context of computer science/engineering. Of course, I would agree that people might informally use the term computer under a much more general definition. But, we are being specific and technical here. This is Slashdot!
Of course computers were called computers because they did the job of Computers (people)
...who were usually women (especially during wartime). I guess in that sense, women were the first computers!
A grand-aunt of mine was married to a Jewish German. His name was Wilhelm - as German a name as you can get at the time. They were both chemist and managed to get away to the US before it was to late, but all of Wilhelm's family perished in the Holocaust. His sister and her husband made it to France just to be arrested the night before trying to make their final get-away by boat. I always admired him for being able to come to Germany without hate.
Like I am really supposed to believe this. Dude, here in the US we have a whole army of holocaust survivors who constantly file lawsuits against foreign companies and nations. They have rallies. They meet at our 10,000+ holocaust memorials. The problem with the holocaust, more than anything, is everyone wants a piece of the action including it seems pathetic Germans like yourself. An incredible number resort to lies so they can feel that extra personal connection.
There is a reason the country once known for its amazing poets, composers, and philosophers is now known for its loose women with a penchant for miscegenation and sick pornography.
Why don't you respond to this post auf Deutsch and I will believe even a tiny piece of your BS. Also, tell me, where are the bodies of all the dead?
Anyway... on to the rest.
1. Do you deny that the Holocaust happened?
No. It happened. There is no question that many hundreds of thousands of people held in German prison camps (both Jews and non-Jews) suffered and died in WW-2.
2. So what is it you want to revise?
Under the circumstances, we have a hard time believing that 6.5 million Jews died in the camps. The number may have been more like 1.5 million.
Further, there are questions of whether the purpose of the camps was the systematic extermination of Jews, as popularly believed, or whether the camps were labor camps, or whether they were for the purpose of detaining an ethnic group sympathetic to wartime enemy Russia.
3. What would lead you to believe that the Holocaust story is exaggerated?
Many people are skeptical of holocaust claims.
They were brought up believing that Germans made soap and lampshades out of the skin of Jewish gas chamber victims.
Jewish Holocaust experts now admit that the widely believed stories about soap and lampshades were false.
All we are asking is that the proponents of the holocaust story get their story straight.
Take Treblinka, for example. How were the Jews killed? You are going to have to cast you votes!
Method A. -- Steam cooking.
On August 8, 1943, the New York Times reported that two million Jews had already been killed at Treblinka by steaming them to death.
An "eyewitness" account received in November 1942 in London from the Warsaw ghetto underground organization, reported that Jews were exterminated in "death rooms" at Treblinka with "steam coming out of the numerous holes in the pipes."
" Lest We Forget", published in New York in 1943 by the World Jewish Congress, describes in detail how Jews were steamed to death, and provides a diagram showing the location of the purported "boiler room" that produced the "live steam."
According to a 1944 "eyewitness" account compiled by the OSS, the principal US intelligence agency, Jews at Treblinka "were in general killed by steam and not by gas as had been at first suspected." {OSS document, April 13, 1944. National Archives (Washington, DC), Military Branch, Record Group 226 (OSS records), No. 67231.}
Although no reputable historian now supports the "steam" story, and little has been heard of it during the last several decades, it was revived in a widely-circulated booklet published in 1979 and 1985 by the influential Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. {The Record: The Holocaust in History.}
Method B. -- Steam suffocation
A Polish government report dated December 5, 1
I don't read or respond to AC posts