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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'm not all that surprised by this, after all as every schoolboy who's played "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" knows, Hitler's merry men came up with staggering advances in technology: Robotics, tesler weaponry, zombies and nubile female assassins in skin-tight leather catsuits. It's amazing that a single American soldier made out of pixels managed to single-handedly wipe out the entire German army really. I wouldn't have known about all of this without access to that game; it seems as though someone has managed to conceal these details about agent Blazkowitz's amazing adventures behind enemy lines until now. I certainly cannot find any mention of it in the library, and the old man in my local pub who's always telling us "youngans" about his own endevours seems very tight lipped/violent when the subject is raised...
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
I'm sure it's just a total coincidence, but hamsters can provide 5.33 - 8 Hz.
math: 40-60 rpm, 8 cycles (16 magnets, alternating poles)/rev.
HIV Crosses Species Barrier... into Muppets
The article (and references) note that Zuse's computers stored their programs on old movie film because paper was in short supply.
;-)
Please keep this fact quiet, lest the MPAA has will make inroards to claiming intellectual property rights to the entire modern computer industry
A calculator is a computer... it uh, computes.
I wonder if this was smuggled out of Stalag 13 by Dunkirk and modified by the Allies to give us the ENIAC?? Boy, I'll bet General Burkhalter was pissed at Klink!
Hoooooooooooooooooogan!
I also reply below your current threshold.
The ABC was not really programmable (it lacked control structures), it was more of an automatic calculator than a computer. It was also slow, error-prone, and had a ridiculous output system involving burning (!) holes in paper cards.
A nice book talking about the early development of computing in the US (so no Z3 or Colossus, sorry) is ENIAC, by Scott McCartney. As the title implies, it's largely about the ENIAC, but ABC is given some treatment as well (particularly in contrast with the far more advanced ENIAC).