In 1945, shortly after the Allied forces captured Berlin, the capital of fascist Germany, a shocking news came from the remote town of Hinterstein in the Alps: a German-developed weapon was found in a granary cellar. Advanced computers.
After a long time, the Western computer community finally discovered that this unassuming machine was indeed the most advanced electronic computer at the time. It took longer to successfully develop than similar inventions in the United States and Britain. Earlier. What is more significant is that it is the first digital computer to adopt program control.
The name of this machine is Z-4, and its inventor is Konrad Zuse (1910-1995), a self-funded civil construction engineer.
Klande Zuse was born on June 22, 1910 in Wilmesdorf, Germany, and received his early education in East Prussia. The cultural tradition of East Prussia is quite conservative. In order to obtain better development, he entered a relatively open school until graduating from high school. In 1927, Chu Ze was admitted to the Technical University of Berlin, majoring in civil engineering and architecture.
He has been fond of painting since he was a child and has very good art skills, so he quickly learned how to design the structure and appearance of a house. The versatile Chu Ze has a wide range of interests and is also good at repairing machines. He often makes some weird gadgets, which surprises his classmates.
During his studies, Chu Ze needed to complete a lot of mechanical calculations, such as bridges, material strength design, etc. He had to calculate the results by himself based on formulas, and often could not finish a strength calculation question in a whole day.
One day, after exhaustedly completing the homework assigned by the teacher, Chu Ze suddenly discovered that the mechanical formulas written in the textbook were fixed. All they had to do was to fill in data into these formulas. Such monotonous work should be done by machines.
In 1935, Zuse received a bachelor's degree in civil engineering and found a job at an aircraft manufacturer in Berlin. His main task happened to be the aircraft strength analysis that he was most scratching his head about. The tedious calculations now became his The main profession, while the secondary tool is only the slide rule is available. Chuze's desire to build a computer became stronger and stronger. He only stayed in this factory for a few short months before resigning and going home to pursue his "invention dream."
With the help of his parents, he separated a living room in his home and transformed it into a "laboratory" and "manufacturing factory", and began a long research and development career alone. Zuse lived in Germany under fascist rule and had no way of knowing about the development of computers by American scientists. He had not even heard of the names of Babbage and Hollerith. At this point, he was far less fortunate than American inventors, unable to receive any funding from universities or government agencies, and only a few friends "sponsored" a small amount of money.
After almost two years of groping in the dark, Chu Ze struggled alone with tenacious perseverance.
He believes that the most important part of a computer is not necessarily the calculation itself, but the transmission and storage of the process and calculation results.
Therefore, he focused his research on memory and designed a mechanical device that could store 64 bits - a bulky component made of thousands of thin steel plates screwed together with bolts, with a volume of about 1 cubic meters - and then connected to the mechanical arithmetic mechanism.
Friends didn’t quite understand what he wanted to do and could only provide limited help. For example, they helped him process hundreds of metal sheets with cutting equipment. The other thin steel plates had to be cut off piece by piece on the round steel with a hand saw. Under such crude conditions, in 1938, Chu Ze actually completed a programmable digital computer Z-1.
He spent all his few thousand marks, but still could not buy more suitable parts. Therefore, the Z-1 computer is actually an experimental model. Although it can complete the 3×3 matrix operation process, it has never been put into practical use.
Before Z3, Zuse had developed his first computer Z1 in 1936. Because Z1 was too slow, Zuse tried to use relays to improve its performance, and finally succeeded in making one in 1941. A general-purpose computer Z3, but it did not attract the attention of the German authorities.
In 1944, Z3 was blown to pieces in an Allied air raid. Another similar computer Z4 made by Zuse was abandoned in the cellar of a farmhouse in the Bavarian countryside.
It was only after the war that people learned that Zuse's relay computer was the world's first binary electronic computing machine. Chu Ze was unfortunately born in Germany during the war and was not recognized for a long time. After Hitler's defeat, Zuse moved to the Swiss countryside and turned to studying "computer calculation" theory. He is also the inventor of the universal computer programming language. However, it was not until 1962 that his invention was recognized and he received 8 honorary doctorates and the German Grand Cross.
The year 2000 is the 100th anniversary of Zuse’s birth. To commemorate this outstanding inventor, the city of Schünfeld announced that Horst Zuse, Zuse’s son, will create the invention in full accordance with Zuse’s wishes. The design plan of that year was to recreate a Z3 computer.
After it is finished, it will be performed first in Schünfeld and then in Berlin and other places to show the public how the earliest computers worked. Finally, Z3 will be officially settled in the Konrad Zuse Museum in Schünfeld.
The Z-3 computer has been working normally for 3 years. In 1944, the U.S. Air Force carried out an air raid on Berlin, and Zuse's house was blown to pieces together with the Z-3 computer. On the eve of the imminent destruction of German fascism, Zuse built an electromagnetic Z-4 computer in 1945 that was more advanced than the Z-3. The memory unit was also expanded from 64 bits to 1024 bits, and the relays almost filled a room. In order to make the machine more efficient, Zuse even designed a programming language Plankalkuel. This achievement made Zuse also among the pioneers of computer languages.
For fear of being bombed again, Zuse moved the Z-4 ??around.
Finally, he took it to southern Germany and moved it to Hinterstedt in the Alps. Because of the small town, the previous scene happened.
After Hitler's defeat, Zuse moved to a desolate village in Switzerland, where he once turned to the study of computer software theory, and was the first to propose the concept of "programming".
In 1949, Zuse installed his Z-4 computer at the Zurich Institute of Technology in Switzerland, and it ran stably until 1958. At this time, the American and British computer circles believed that a German construction engineer had developed a program-controlled digital computer earlier than they did. Currently, a Z-3 prototype is still stored in a museum in Munich, but it is no longer functioning properly.
Subsequently, Chu Ze founded "Zhu Ze Computer Company" and developed the vacuum tube general-purpose computer Z-22R in 1958. Twelve years have passed since the birth of the first vacuum tube general-purpose computer ENIAC. Computer historians believe that if Zuse had not lived in Germany under fascist rule, he might have upgraded the Z-type computer series to electronic computers, and the history of world computers would have been rewritten.
In fact, as early as 1938, Zuse and his friends were already considering assembling a new computer using 2,000 vacuum tubes and other electronic components. When he heard after the war that the University of Pennsylvania had developed a tube computer, he couldn't help but sigh: "All I can do is shake my head."
Invented as early as 1938 Chu Ze, who mastered computers, was almost forgotten for decades.
The patent application he filed for the Z-3 computer in 1941 was still rejected by the judge in 1967 on the grounds of "lack of inventive step." It was not until 1962 that he was recognized as one of the inventors of the computer and received 8 honorary doctorates and the German Grand Cross. Later, the Berlin Museum also rebuilt the Z-1 computer.
In the early 1960s, Chuze Computer Company had grown into a company with thousands of employees and sold nearly 300 computers of various types. In 1966, his company was acquired by the famous Siemens Company, and Zuse served as a consultant to Siemens Company.
Chuse lived to the age of 85 and lived with his wife in a simple house near Fulda. He died on December 19, 1995. Fortunately, the whole world has recognized him as the "father of digital computers."