The discussion about Zuse's machines is interesting. Let me point out that there is no "first computer". I edited in 2000 a book
with the title "The First Computers" (MIT Press). Note the plural. The book deals with all the machines mentioned in this dicussion, from the ABC, Z3 to the ENIAC and beyond. Each machine had something unique, which would later be integral part of what we now call a computer.
The proof that the Z3 is Turing universal was published by me in 1998. The details and papers can be found in our web site www.zib.de/zuse
which contains simulations of the machine, the interpreter of Plankalkuel that we wrote, and photographs of our hardware reconstruction of the Z3.
Raul Rojas
Freie Universität Berlin
Slashdot Mirror
The discussion about Zuse's machines is interesting. Let me point out that there is no "first computer". I edited in 2000 a book with the title "The First Computers" (MIT Press). Note the plural. The book deals with all the machines mentioned in this dicussion, from the ABC, Z3 to the ENIAC and beyond. Each machine had something unique, which would later be integral part of what we now call a computer. The proof that the Z3 is Turing universal was published by me in 1998. The details and papers can be found in our web site www.zib.de/zuse which contains simulations of the machine, the interpreter of Plankalkuel that we wrote, and photographs of our hardware reconstruction of the Z3. Raul Rojas Freie Universität Berlin