Zuse Z3
First computer in the world celebrates its anniversary
Horst Zuse, Konrad Zuse’s son, with a replica of the Z3 in Berlin
© imago / Mauersberger
It’s been an unbelievable 80 years since the world’s first computer was presented. It was developed by Konrad Zuse.
PCs, laptops, smartphones and tablets have been a matter of course in most people’s lives for many years. If you ask the average user, he or she will usually hardly know how long ago the world’s first functional computer was invented. On May 12, 1941, exactly 80 years ago, Konrad Zuse (1910-1995) presented the Z3, the world’s first functioning and program-controlled digital computer.
After Zuse, born in the summer of 1910, had completed his studies, he first worked for the Henschel aircraft factory near Berlin. However, he was soon to go into business for himself and tinker with his idea of a “mechanical brain” in his parents’ apartment. In 1938 the calculating machine Z1 was created, a forerunner of the modern computer, which “was jammed for most of the time”, as can be read in the blog of the Heinz Nixdorf MuseumsForum.
The completed prototype of the Z2 followed in 1939, in which Zuse already relied on relay technology. In 1941 the Z3 was presented, in whose memory and arithmetic unit there were already 2,000 relays. Numbers could be entered and output via a control panel, programming was carried out via perforated film strips. Later Zuse also worked on the further developed Z4, among other things.
Can you examine the Z3?
Unfortunately, anyone who wants to examine a piece of computer history cannot take a look at the original Z3, which was never actually used because it was destroyed by bombing raids on Berlin during World War II. However, a replica of the Z3 and the Z4 that could be saved are in the Deutsches Museum in Munich. On the museum’s website It says, among other things: “With their glass cabinets made of wood and cardboard, their tied and screwed cable harnesses or the spark-spraying impulse roller, the two machines convey the invisible ingenious ideas of the well-known inventor in a special way.”