The Computer My Life - Konrad Zuse  ## Metadata - Author: **Konrad Zuse** - Full Title: The Computer My Life - Category: #articles - URL: https://readwise.io/reader/document_raw_content/140407417 ## Highlights - Creator of the first fully automated, program-controlled and freely programmable computer using binary floating-point calculation. It was operational in 1941. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hq3039x86j4gdvcmj7sy5c9f)) - In the 1930s I dared tell only my closest friends and colleagues that I believed it was possible that a computer could defeat chess grandmasters. Outsiders would have called me a dreamer. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hq310cdax0y4fnszj338j4qt)) - And something else is forgotten . .. something which might be called the soul, or Lebensgefuhl, the feeling of being alive, of not all but certainly many inventors. For them, invention or discovery is not one among many activities, but actually as Oswald Spengler said, a passion. Goethe has excellently captured this Lebensgefuhl in the character ofFaust. And, as in Faust, we find Mephistophelian figures in the company ofmany inventors and discoverers. Only too often the inventor is the idealist who, like Mephisto, tries to improve the world, only to be crushed by harsh realities. Ifhe wants to carry through his ideas, he is forced to do business with the wielders of power, whose sense of reality is sharper and more developed ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hq314gx4dq5b3qj76rx675en)) - I must not have impressed my teachers as being a particularly pleasant student. As a child and as a youth I was a dreamer, and at school my thoughts often wandered from the subject at hand. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hq324054sm3m9eey7xbmesa6)) - Although my memories of the Gymnasium Hosianum in Braunsberg are not unmarred, I was able to seal many lasting friendships there. One of my friends from this time was Herbert Weber. He was later to become my first financier. It was with a portion ofhis savings that I began to build computers. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hq3277v0pen5hgr4fk65csq3)) - I myself was considered a good mathem atician; th erefore he did n' t worry too much about me. This led to my tempor a ry neglect of mathematics, so th at , to his grea t dismay, I could no longer even a nswer th e most rudimentary of q ues tions. Ano the r mathem atics and physics teacher impressed us with his casual manner of expla ining even th e most complex things, as when he expla ined light refraction cit ing th e principl e of nature's extreme lazin ess. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hq32dnsd0ktkx73vaxhdpr0g)) - I was also reading the first volume of Karl Marx's Das Kapital3 back the n, and a ttempted, as best I could, to understand thi s difficult book. During my days as a construction trainee, the young construction workers were clea rly impressed to finally meet someone who had actually read Das Kapital. I read Rathenau , Freud, Weininger , Nietzsche, Rilke, ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hq97eggex3mk55vt3493sw64)) - On the other hand, the previously quoted Oswald Spengler made a lasting impression on many of us. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hq97hggrjfbn801w0x2a14ta)) - The story begin s in th e seventeenth century with Leibniz, who , together with Schickard and Pascal, was one ofthe pioneers ofcompu ting machine construc tion. He developed the mathemati cs of the bin ary number system and mad e one of the first formulations of symbolic logic - what we tod ay ca ll propositional ca lculus or Boolean algebra. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqbvns5302mhyf2j7xf96t3r)) - Babbage was a mathematician and applied the princip le ofpunched-card control to th e computing machine. Since he did not yet have electrica l technology a t his disposal , he was forced to find mechanical solutions to his problems . His machines were to be stea m-driven. In the end, after thirty years ofwork, technical problems proved his downfall. It is said that he led a troubled and quarrelsome life as an inventor. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqbvt8jyepqyncyr6796gp92)) - Babbage illustrates that even the best ideas will not be accepted if the technology required for their realization is absent. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqbvw4g7t7zna3dnfjbg3bd4)) - I also believe th at without the finan cial or ph ysical support ofthese origin al five or six friends, Konrad Zuse would have had a very difficult tim e realizing his worldshaking and revolutionary inv ention. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqbwb8j44pm8r4e2w9yg50kq)) - When in 1938 we demonstrated the prototype of this switch to a small group a t the Technical Unive rsity during a lecture on th e electronic comput ing machi ne, th e aud ience response was disappointing. When we explained th at we would need some two thousand vacuum tubes and severa l tho usa nd glow-discharge lamps to const ruc t an efficient program- con tro lled comput ing device, they only shook th eir heads. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqcx8vpwr451b4ve6dp4h3sm)) - More complex brains are conce rned onl y with the speedi er completion of processes; for example: I. parallel execution ofelemen tary operations 2. simultaneous determination of long condi tional chai ns ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqcxynyrzf0g1esf8jt4z2d7)) - For every problem to be solved th ere must be a special-purpose brain that solves it as fast as possible. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqcxy388rq7q8f2tsf80wbge)) - th e logical developmen t from th e Babbage machine - or my Z3 - to stored- program compu te rs, or what are known tod ay as John vo n Neumann machines. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqcyfbra9139q56710dssxf2)) - Clearly, the view presented here will hardly satisfy the mathemati- cian. It also illustrates just how hard I tried to build bridges between theoretical logic and practice. Unfortunately, I was not yet familiar with the then already published work of Turing. His work "On Computable Numbers" 12 is now known the world over among experts. Turing's approach was from mathematical logic toward the model ofthe comput- ing machine and placed the concept ofcomputability in the center of his studies. I myself took exactly the opposite path. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqcykfzrj9dww5gvadz2207b)) - Aside from a few tri al programs - programs to compute determinants or quadratic equa tions, for example - it was the program to compute a complex matrix that was ofchiefimportance. This was an essential step in the computa tion of critica l flutter frequ encies of aircraft. If the wing vibrations a t the natural frequency are amplified by the air current, wing flutter may occur at critical speeds. It corresponds approxima tely to the waving ofa flag. In the pioneer days ofaircraft construction, this phenom- enon caused many crashes which were then inexpli cable. The very diffi- cult theor etical foundations were only very slowly explored . Calculating the critica l frequencies required a lengthy and expensive procedure. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqcz68dw827zfz1kkvbwahvn)) - Officially, however, the Z3 was not considered vital. It was considered, more or less, to be something for the amusement and private pleasure of my friends and myself. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqczaz6a3095h8tppcdp72m1)) - Tenacity is often more likely to lead to success than intelligence or inventiveness ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqkmb2sz5g0mmzsmhppmqvph)) - From this I learned that whenever possible an inventor, should limit his ran ge of ideas to shor t-term, attaina ble goals. IfI wanted to be taken serio usly, I could speak only to a few trusted frien ds about applied symbolic logic, or the incredible speeds ofelectronic devices. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqkmp7rcmxk822jvmgn51r6x)) - So computing is, to summarize once again: " Forming new data from given data according to a rule .. . " ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqq6x6s4dk1jhah3psekdxcv)) - Turing's machine - which a t the tim e meant nothing to me, since we knew nothing ofhis work - is based on the following concept: We have an information ca rrier in th e form ofan endless tape divided into individual cells, which in th e simplest case could each store on e bit. This tape is fed through a machine which is fitted with a device by mean s ofwhi ch each cell of th e tape, as it passes through th e device, ca n be eithe r read or overwritten. The machine ca n perform three op er ati ons on th e tape: it ca n write a new bit of information , it can mov e th e tape to th e left, or it can move it to the right. In add ition, th e machine can assume a number of internal sta tes, and move from one state to ano the r according to a prescr ibed rul e ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqrnsn0q0x31q3dk13tcp6td)) - Computing means forming new data from given data according to a rul e. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqxt03pq71fasf3pemykryff)) - The development offormal languages is still in full swing. Professor Zemanek likes to use the metaphor of the Tower of Babel: on the one hand, one is firmly committed to going further along the path to the mechanization of schematic thought processes; on the other hand, fundamental innovations meet with the greatest of difficulty, since the available operating systems are hard to alter. Nevertheless, I have not given up all hope that the Plankalkiil will once again attain practical importance. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqxtbkfb1693wk3r71qqda1k)) - This is why I was very pleased when Professor Helm cke was impressed with my ideas. Sin ce thi s tim e we have often discussed relat ed qu estions. And a lways in th e yea rs to follow mu ch of what I had foreseen was rea lized , such as computer contro l ofmachine tools or the design and construc tion of circ uit parts lor computing machines by computing machines. J ohn von Neumann had treated th e idea of th e "s elf-reproducing system" from th e mathem ati cians' view point. ?" and for a few yea rs now I have a lso been reexamining th ese questions. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqxtkmrh47zww5r0s9h0km3v)) - Today, most would agree that the Z3, completed in 1941 in my Berlin workshop, was the first satisfactorily working computer in the world. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hqzkffa0xx3vhktgbkd479je)) - For the inventor who is active as an entrepreneur this means that he may introduce new products and methods based on protected inventions without disturbance and secure his place in the market. The free space thus guaranteed against competitors who are not infrequently financially stronger contributes quite essentially to securing the existence ofsmall and medium-size undertakings. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01hr88p5v7zantacp4t7j3frmh))