On Zuse presented the Z3, built in his workshop, to the public. In 1941, he improved on the basic Z2 machine, and built the Z3. In 1941 Zuse started a company, Zuse Apparatebau (Zuse Apparatus Construction), to manufacture his machines, renting a workshop on the opposite side in Methfesselstraße 7 and stretching through the block to Belle-Alliance Straße 29 (renamed and renumbered as Mehringdamm 84 in 1947). The S2 featured an integrated analog-to-digital converter under program control, making it the first process-controlled computer. Zuse built the S1 and S2 computing machines, which were special purpose devices which computed aerodynamic corrections to the wings of radio-controlled flying bombs. In 1940, the German government began funding him and his company through the Aerodynamische Versuchsanstalt (AVA, Aerodynamic Research Institute, forerunner of the DLR), which used his work for the production of glide bombs. The Z2 was a revised version of the Z1 using telephone relays. In September 1940 Zuse presented the Z2, covering several rooms in the parental flat, to experts of the Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt (DVL i.e. In 1939, Zuse was called to military service, where he was given the resources to ultimately build the Z2. Plaque commemorating Zuse's work, attached to the ruin of Methfesselstraße 7, Berlin Working in his parents' apartment in 1936, he produced his first attempt, the Z1, a floating point binary mechanical calculator with limited programmability, reading instructions from a perforated 35 mm film. īeginning in 1935, he experimented in the construction of computers in his parents' flat on Wrangelstraße 38, moving with them into their new flat on Methfesselstraße 10, the street leading up the Kreuzberg, Berlin. This required the performance of many routine calculations by hand, which he found mind-numbing, leading him to dream of doing them by machine. He started work as a design engineer at the Henschel aircraft factory in Schönefeld near Berlin. CareerĪfter graduation, Zuse worked for the Ford Motor Company, using his artistic skills in the design of advertisements. Zuse then pursued civil engineering, graduating in 1935. He enrolled in the Technische Hochschule Berlin (now Technical University of Berlin) and explored both engineering and architecture, but found them boring. Zuse attended the Collegium Hosianum in Braunsberg, and in 1923, the family moved to Hoyerswerda, where he passed his Abitur in 1928, qualifying him to enter university. In 1912, his family moved to East Prussian Braunsberg (now Braniewo in Poland), where his father was a postal clerk. Konrad Zuse was born in Berlin on 22 June 1910. Possibly his first documented influence on a US company was IBM's option on his patents in 1946. Due to World War II, Zuse's work went largely unnoticed in the United Kingdom and the United States. Much of his early work was financed by his family and commerce, but after 1939 he was given resources by the Nazi German government. In 1969, Zuse suggested the concept of a computation-based universe in his book Rechnender Raum ( Calculating Space). From 1943 to 1945 he designed Plankalkül, the first high-level programming language. In 1941, he founded one of the earliest computer businesses, producing the Z4, which became the world's first commercial computer. Zuse was noted for the S2 computing machine, considered the first process control computer. Thanks to this machine and its predecessors, Zuse has often been regarded as the inventor of the modern computer. His greatest achievement was the world's first programmable computer the functional program-controlled Turing-complete Z3 became operational in May 1941. Konrad Zuse ( German: 22 June 1910 – 18 December 1995) was a German civil engineer, pioneering computer scientist, inventor and businessman. Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1972Ĭomputer History Museum Fellow Award in 1999 Goode Memorial Award in 1965 (together with George Stibitz),