Konrad Zuse:
Konrad Zuse was born on June 22 1910 in Berlin-Wilmersdorf, like son of Wilhelm Emil Albert Zuse, post-office officer, and his wife Maria. When he was two years old, his parents mudieron with him and his older sister to Braunsberg (Braniewo) in Eastern Prussia. Because his father was again moved, Konrad Zuse made the Abitur in 1928 in Hoyerswerda.
He began to study mechanical engineering at the higher technical school in Berlin-Charlottenburg, but - looking for a possibility to combine his fascination with technology with his artistic character - he switched to studying civil engineering shortly thereafter. In 1935 he finished his studies as a civil engineer, and started working for the Henschel aircraft factory in Berlin-Schönefeld as static. Because - according to him - he was "too lazy to do computations", he came up with the idea of building a machine capable of taking care of this work. He quit his job and started building a programmable machine - the Z1 - in his parents' apartment.
From the beginning, Konrad Zuse's binary system and Boole's Algebra seemed more useful than the decimal system for a computer. Based on the binary system, in 1938 he built the Z1, a mechanical machine operating with electricity and with the possibility of being able to program it, although in a limited way. Due to the lack of perfection in its mechanical elements, the Z1 never got to work correctly: It was financed only with private money (from relatives and friends of Zuse), and built of thousands of plate parts, worked with a saw marquetry in his parents' apartment.
In 1939, Zuse was enrolled in the Wehrmacht because of World War II, but - with the help of his friends and a new labor treaty with the Henschel aircraft factory, which produced military aircraft - I was able to be freed of his military obligation after a half year. It is said that he had offered himself to the military to build an automatic machine for defense against air attacks within two years, but he had been assured that in two years the Wehrmacht would have won the war much earlier. However, the war prevented Zuse from working with mathematicians or technicians from abroad, nor did he receive help from the government: He had to continue with his work on his own.
The next model - the Z2 (1940) - also had a mechanical memory, but the arithmetic unit worked with electricity, and was made up of 800 relays. After making sure that the Z2 worked properly, he founded the first company specialized in building computers in the world: The company "Zuse Apparatebau". Thanks to a successful demonstration of the Z2 in front of the "Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt" (German experimental aeronautical station), Zuse was financed with the construction of the following model.
Back in his parents' apartment, he built with the help of his friends the Z3 - a machine weighing 1 ton built of 2000 relays. The Z3 was unable to execute conditioned jumps, ramifications or cycles, but it was the first programmable machine of the world, and for the work of the engineers of this time (for example to solve systems of linear equations) quite useful.
The program was entered into the machine through a perforated tape, the data in decimal system through a keyboard. The result of an addition or subtraction was exhibited after less than a second in a field of light in decimal system, for multiplication and division the Z3 needed three seconds.
Horst Zuse, the inventor's eldest son - Konrad Zuse was married on January 6, 1945 and had five children - he later said in an interview: "My father has used principles that, by a majority, were known, for example, the system binary. [...] But he has integrated this system consistently in his machines. He introduced the principle of a control program in his machines. He has put the memory in his machines [...] He introduced a calculator with floating-point binary numbers, which also already existed. The genius is that he has put together all the right components in the right equipment at the right time, and he did it from the beginning according to the minimum design principle. This had a good reason, because my father had no money. "
While the Z3, along with photos and design plans, was destroyed in a bomb attack on December 21, 1943, the "MARK I" was operational after the Second World War and its capabilities could be demonstrated at any time. This machine was 16 meters long, consisted of 700,000 components, and was designed by the mathematician Howard H. Aiken, which took six years with the help of IBM to build it. For decades, Aiken considered himself the inventor of the first computer. To change this, Konrad Zuse asked everyone who had seen the Z3 in their parents' apartment to report in writing what they had seen. Because of this testimony prevailed in the sixties, the belief that Konrad Zuse built the first computer.
With the "Plankalkül" Konrad Zuse also invented the first programming language - or at least one of the first universal programming languages in the world - in the years from 1942 to 1945.
In 1949 he founded the "Zuse KG" with two co-owners, and completed his work on the Z4 - at this time the only operational computer in Europe. He sent it to the higher technical school in Zurich on July 11, 1950. The Z4 was already able to calculate eleven multiplications per second, and the results were displayed through a typewriter.
In the same year Zuse sold to the company Leitz a computer for 300,000 D-Mark (the Z5). However, this remained the only important business of the "Zuse KG" for years: In the post-war era, the most important thing was to rebuild and repair the buildings, factories and production facilities - in the end there was no money to buy computers.
Only when the German Research Foundation in 1955 began to promote the installation of computers in the universities economically, began the production in serious with the Z11. This 100 000 D-Mark computer was sold 43 times, and it was used mainly for the topography of the earth and for static and optical calculations. Another milestone in the history of the "Zuse KG" story was the "Z22" which was sold 55 times as of 1957. It was the first computer of the "Zuse KG" using thermionic valves instead of relays and a magnetic drum - a hard disk precursor today - as memory.
At the beginning of the sixties international competition put more and more complaints to the Zuse AG. From 1961 Konrad Zuse used transistors instead of tubes ("Z23") - semiconductor devices that act like tubes, but much faster, smaller and more robust and consume much less electricity. He was behind the development: The transistors were first introduced in 1955 by the Bell Laboriatoris in the US, and in October 1958, Texas Instuments introduced the first integrated circuit (four transistors and four capacitors). When Zuse started using transistors, he had already started developing the microprocessor in another place.
In 1964, the Zuse KG - which employed 1,200 people at the moment - was acquired by Rheinstahl, and Konrad Zuse retired as an active partner. For a short time, the company was owned by Brown Boveri & Cie, before being framed in the Siemens AG. In the end, the Zuse KG had built 251 computers in total.
After having committed some years in the company that was no longer his, with 59 years he retired and began to devote himself again to painting, which would care a lot from his youth. His paintings were sold in five-figure quantities. In 1995 - aged 84 - he gave Bill Gates a portrait of Bill Gates, when they met at the CeBIT in Hannover.
Nine months later, on December 18, 1995, Konrad Zuse died in Hünfeld in Fulda.
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