Talk:Konrad Zuse

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Contents

[edit] Zuse's Z-series: (first) real computers? Definitions and comparisons

[edit] Looping, Turing completeness, Z3 vs ENIAC

There has been considerable debate over whether the Z-series machines really constituted computers on the talk:history of computing page and the associated timeline page.

The consensus is leaning towards the view that, while they represented something close to a computer and had many interesting features, they didn't have looping constructs which is a prerequisite for a real computer.

This so-called `consensus' comes as a complete surprise to me - of course you could build loops on the Z3 of 1941; there just was no instruction for conditional loops! Quite sufficient for the engineering applications of that era. Nobody back then really cared for Turing completeness, and no machine of that time was used in a way related to the universal sense (e.g., for translating various universal programming languages into each other). For example, ENIAC of 1946 wasn't; it was used for applications similar to those Z3 was used for (and one actually had to rewire ENIAC to `program' it - some say, this does not even qualify as programming, otherwise any type of rebuilding some limited computer might be viewed as programming). Nevertheless, there is a way of implementing a universal Turing machine on a Z3 with sufficient storage. It's an awkward way, but the Turing machine itself is an awkward device, of course, designed to be simple, not efficient. No matter how you look at it, from a theoretical purist point of view, or from a realistic and practical point of view, Z3 was indeed the first program-controlled computer. Z3 10:48, 23 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I think there is no such thing as a first computer, any definition would be arbitrary. All calculating stuff from this time is groundbreaking and should be named 'among the first' or something similar. If enough details are given, anyone can make up his own mind. --Yooden
I disagree. To my mind, there is a fairly clear definition possible - a computer should have equivalent capabilities to a universal Turing machine (modulo storage capacity). From what I've read so far, none of Zuse's machines had this capability, whereas ENIAC (for example) almost certainly did. -- Robert Merkel
Z3 did have it (see other comments on this page). And to program ENIAC you had to rewire it. Z3 14:29, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
I have removed the claim that the Z3 is Turing-complete. The note above that it would require a sufficient amount of memory is misleading as it would actually require an infinite amount of memory. Also there was no reference in the article to support this claim. Amoss 12:05, 28 August 2006 (UTC)
I re-added the sentence, that it was proven to be Turing complete. Here is the link you asked for: http://www.zib.de/zuse/Inhalt/Kommentare/Html/0684/universal2.html - To GENERALLY DEMAND for sufficient memory is in fact misleading - of course the PC that you are working on right now CANNOT compute EVERY describable function due to memory shortage – it IS ONLY Turing complete, universal und general purpose insofar as you only have to add sufficient memory needed for a certain function – and there will still be infinitely many that it cannot compute. --217.236.223.163 17:25, 3 September 2006 (UTC)
Surely, anyone who has read a book on computability (I think mine was my 3rd year University text book :-)) would know what the argument in that paper was going to be without even looking at it? To me a more interesting question is whether the Z3 WAS ever used for iterative calculations (presumably by sticking the ends of the film-stock containing the program into a physical loop). It is not clear to me from (the english translation of) his autobiography that he did (although I shall check). Presumably to do this one would have had to input and/or output values on every loop round the film-program-punched-thing and then stop it once one had achieved what one set out to - there is as far as I can see no conditional halt. Hpengwyn 20:14, 5 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Definition of 'computer', von Neumann

OK, you may be right, I'm lacking theoretical knowledge here. In this case, I suggest to write Definition of Computer or something similar and point to it whenever appropiate.

I just checked Computer and the definition there. It uses a Von Neumann model which is mentioned in Konrad Zuse. Could you clear this up? --Yooden

The article Computer needs quite a bit of editing (I hadn't seen that one before, I'll clean it up at some stage). The "Von Neumann model" is a model of the internal organisation of machines that are computers. All single-processor machines currently in use fit this model (multi-processor machines of various types vary from it lesser or greater amounts IIRC). Zeus's machine does not implement a full Von Neumann model, as the program is stored in a logically separate form of memory (paper tape, which was read-only as far as the computer was concerned) to the data (stored in an arrangement of shifting metal bars).
Regardless, whether Zuse's machines were Von Neumann architectures is irrelevant to the question of whether they are computers or not. A Von Neumann computer describes a *design* of a computer, not their capabilities - and capabilities are really what I'm discriminating on here.
However, an article by Zuse's son http://www.epemag.com/zuse/ points to a 1998 scientific paper in an IEEE journal supposedly proving that the Z3 did in fact have the capabilities of a Turing machine. I find this difficult to believe, as the Z3 lacked a type of instruction called a "conditional branch" - in essence, an instruction saying "if (proposition X) is true, go to point (Y) in the program, otherwise keep going to the next instruction. It is difficult to imagine how you could get equivalent capabilities to a Turing machine in a machine without a conditional branch instruction or something similar, but IEEE generally doesn't publish papers with wrong proofs in them. Anyway, I'll go to my old university library and dig up the paper, and if it checks out Mr Zuse's Z3 should be regarded as a computer (though perhaps only in a theoretical sense - it may be that the machine may have been thoroughly impractical to use as a full-blown computer) in my opinion. Robert Merkel

[edit] Practicality of Z3 vs Turing machine

But of course the Turing machine itself also is thoroughly impractical to use as a full-blown computer! Z3 14:29, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

I have seen the paper; with a trick that Zuse never anticipated and that is thoroughly impractical, Z3 can be made Turing complete. --AxelBoldt
The significance of this Turing argument is really overblown, in my opinion. Turing machines are impractical. Turing machines implemented on Z3 are impractical as well. Nevertheless, the Z3 could run all kinds of really practical programs. That's the only thing that mattered to the engineers of the 1940s who were not really interested in the theoretical limits of computability and provability pointed out by Goedel (1931) and Turing (1936). Z3 14:29, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)

[edit] Z3 vs Colossus, ENIAC, EDVAC, EDSAC & Manchester Baby

capabilities are really what I'm discriminating on here.

Pray do discriminate, you seem to know a lot more than I do; but please do it explicit, like 'Zuse was almost there, but the Z-3 lacked somesuch, so Colossus Mark I is the first computer'. (The fact that Zuse is German does only affect my knowledge about him; I don't care who's first.) --Yooden
Colossus *wasn't* a general purpose computer - there's agreement on that. It was a fascinating electronic device, but it was a special-purpose machine that could do one thing and one thing only. Mark I doesn't meet the definition I've given either. However, the Z3 does - but with the catch that it wasn't known that it could do so until 60 years after it was built and by which time there were many millions of computers meeting the definition in existence.
Zuse built a machine that could have been used as a computer (meeting the Turing-complete definition) before anyone else did, but it's totally impractical to use it as such, Zuse never figured out how it could be done, and indeed nobody knew it was the case until three years after he died and by which time computers millions of times more powerful were available for negligible cost on a single chip. That leaves us with:
  • The analytical engine would have been a computer, if ever built.
  • Zuse's Z3 was a computer, but nobody knew it was until nearly 60 years later, and it wouldn't have really been practical as such.
  • ENIAC was a computer.
  • EDVAC was the first practical stored-program computer of the architecture we know today.
That seems to be the state of play to me.
So, after all that, Yooden's quite right - it's very difficult to anoint anybody with the title of "inventor of the first computer" or a particular machine as "the first computer". However, we should try and edit this information here in to the relevant articles. RM
ENIAC was a programmable computer only if you assume that rewiring counts as programming. And it was the British EDSAC, not EDVAC, which was the first practical stored-program computer. EDVAC was just a draft that influenced the construction of EDSAC. Z3 14:29, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
One caveat: I think EDVAC was the first design of a stored program computer, but the first functional stored program computer was the Manchester "baby" of 48. --AxelBoldt
Right, but its successor EDSAC was the first practical one. Z3 14:29, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
However, we should try and edit this information here in to the relevant articles.

[edit] 'Computer', 'Turing machine' article updates

Before I get my hands dirty, I would ask you to update Computer, so that I can rely on that. --Yooden

Shall do. To clarify what I mean by Turing-equivalent my definition, you might want to look at Turing machine, particularly the idea of a Universal Turing Machine. When I say a machine is "Turing-equivalent" or such, it means that the particular computer is capable of acting as a universal Turing machine, except that its storage capacity is limited. There is an important precept of computer science (it's not a theorem because it can't be proved, only disproved, but everybody believes it to be more than likely true) that says that *any* other computer-like system you can construct can be emulated on a Universal Turing machine. So, if you have a computer capable of being a Universal Turing Machine, you have a computer that can do anything any other computer (in the broadest possible sense) can (given enough time and assuming we've got enough storage space). This is why Turing-equivalence (usually called Turing-completeness) is a natural criterion for computer scientists to choose for determining whether a machine is a "computer" or not.
That certainly doesn't sound arbitrary, and Turing machine may serve as a reference. Please add 'Turing-equivalence' and 'Turing-completeness' at the right places in Turing machine. --Yooden

[edit] Z3 simulation of Turing machine

The last change is referring to HWR's comment on talk:History of computing. Details anyone? --Yooden

If you mean the simulation of a Turing machine by the Z3: it's at http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/~widiger/ICHC/papers/universal/universal.html
--AxelBoldt

[edit] Ceruzzi's Reckoners (1983), Zuse's The Computer -- My Life (1993)

The Z-3 was built as a prototype to test the feasibility of a machine capable of solving the large systems of linear equations required for analysis of resonance in airplane wing designs in order to avoid the problem of aerodynamic "flutter". The limited memory of the Z-3 was not capable of handling the large problems where manual methods were impractical, so it was never used for any practical purpose, only small tests. This was of course the intention. The success of the Z-3 led to the authorization of the full-scale machine, the Z-4, but this machine was not completed before the end of the war, due largely to the impact of Allied bombing raids on Berlin after 1944. Zuse also built a small relay device called the S-1 which executed a fixed sequence of calculations. It was used by the Henschel Company in the production of the HS-293 flying bomb, which was used in large numbers toward the end of the war, against Allied shipping in the Mediterranean and in the German retreat from Poland.

Source: Paul E. Ceruzi, Reckoners (1983) - HWR

Sounds good; put it in where I only hinted at the guided missile. --Yooden
I think you oughta add some things from his autobiography: 'the computer, my life' or whatever its called.
1. he did a hell of alot of his work in a converted room in his parents house
2. he and his buddies were a bit dumbfounded as to what to do about the racism of the government, they seem to have had no idea about what to do about it.
3. when he was trying to hire helpers for his company, the only person he coudl get was a blind person, because under the nazi regime all 'strong' people were devoted to military service, while the 'defectives' such as the blind were considered unusable. However the blind person easily understood the concept of binary arithmetic and helpd him assemble his machines.
4. He tried to get the military interested in his machine to help airplanes, but the guy he talked to basically said "why should we want to improve our planes? they are already perfect"
5. he had a hell of a hard time selling his machine to businesses after the war. they didnt see the point of using his machine.
To the person who added the above, why don't you add this stuff into the article where it fits? Much of it seems relevant, though you might want to change the tone a little --Robert Merkel

[edit] German tech restrictions/bans in the aftermath of WWII

I removed the following statement from the main article, pending verification:

The victorious Allies took all patents from Germany and the Allied Military Occupation Government did not allow manufacturing.

The manufacturing statement is extremely strange, since Zuse himself started a manufacturing company in 1949. Were there really no surviving patents of German inventions after 1945? AxelBoldt, Thursday, May 23, 2002

Not computers, not guns, not anything that could remotely be classified as anything usable for war-making. (After all it was long planned by Morgenthau and Henry Dexter White to only leave nothing but a stubble-field). Only things for agricultural or household use were allowed. But this whole subject might make an interesting new topic for wiki, where facts and fiction could finally be explored, since all these records where kept secret for national security for over 50 years. One fact is that Bayer aspirin did not get their patent back until the 1990s, that is from WW I, One - that is !!! User:H.J.
The patent on aspirin is long expired. I believe what that got back was permission to use the Bayer name in America, which had also been confiscated during World War One. So now we have two Bayer companies - one American, one German. But that is not relevant to WWII. It appears that the Allies seized the internal intellectual property rights of enemy nations, that is the U.S. could violate German patents inside the U.S. but not outside. These rights were restored eventually in the 1950s as the Allies returned control to Germany and Japan. Also it appears America allowed Japan to violate German patents in the name of rebuilding civilian industry in Japan. --rmhermen
When people question whether it was ethical for the Allies to seize German intellectual property, it immediately brings up the question of whether it was ethical for Germany to invade Poland (along with Austria, Czech republic, etc.) --Perf
I do not know much about aspirin, but the nascent computer industries of US and UK definitely profited a lot from the fact that Zuse lost many years of his lead when US/UK bombers destroyed much of his work. Zuse was an entrepreneur; he wanted to market his inventions and create an entire new industry. Who knows what the computer industry would look like today if he had had a chance to exploit his lead and develop his inventions in peace? For example, the Z4 (developed under adverse conditions) was almost finished in 1945, but it took 5 more turbulent years in the aftermath of World War II (without any new Z-designs) until Zuse was able to make some money from it (in Switzerland, which is not surprising, since Germany was largely destroyed and had other things to worry about). Despite such setbacks and delays, the Z4 still earned the title "first commercial computer", but in the meantime UK/US researchers had closed the gap, and the future belonged to companies such as IBM. Z3 14:29, 24 Mar 2004 (UTC)
History is full of "could have beens." Easy to speculate, but as far as we know, there is only one reality. If WWII had never happened, would Colossus and ENIAC ave been built? I notice that there is almost no mention of the ABC. If Atanasov remained at his University, would he have patented the ABC? -- Perf
rmhermen, I think wikipedians could fill pages on this, should we run out of material user:H.J.

[edit] From the German Wikipedia

User:Duncharris had asked for a translation of the content of the corresponding German-language article. Except for its references section, etc., and a subset of the biographical info we've already got, here it is. Feel more than free to "mine" this for anything missing from our article. (Looks to me like this is a somewhat exaggerated maximalist case for his importance: it may be suggestive, but I'd want to find the specific citations for some of this.) Also, feel free to further refine my translation, in place here. -- Jmabel 08:25, Sep 17, 2004 (UTC)

Zuse developed the theory and implemented the practice of computer calculation on the basis of exponent and mantissa. Today, this procedure for floating point computation is used by every computer from the pocket calculator to the cluster.
By specifying the programming language Plankalkül, he sketched the world's first universal programming language.
With the development and construction of his first computers (Z1 to Z4), each constructed based on the latest switch technologies of its time, he made his place in the history of research. By his later activity as a computer manufacturer, he was heavily involved in the introduction of the computer into economic enterprises.



How can a computer be Turing-complete but not general purpose? This seems to me like a desperate attempt to defend the ENIAC against Zuse's Z3 as the first computer. The article tries to create the impression that there may be some, quite artificial, definition, according to which Zuse's Z3 might be considered the first computer. But whoever makes such a claim has to explain what exactly it is that is to be expected of a real computer, and why his definitions should be considered "better" than that of Alan Turing.

[edit] Improving the introduction

Currently the introduction reads: "His greatest achievement was the completion of the first functional tape-stored-program-controlled computer, the Z3, in 1941." This sounds as if there were other computers that maybe stored their programs in a different way. Of course there weren't any. I'll correct this: "His greatest achievement was the completion of the first functional program-controlled computer, the Z3, in 1941 (the program was stored on a tape)." Science History 13:15, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

The intro also says:"The Z3 is claimed to be the "first computer" as such, though this depends on complex and subtle definitional issues, as the machine was not truly general-purpose in the manner of later machines (see the article of history of computing for a thorough discussion)." This is obsolete for at least two reasons. 1. The Z3 was Turing-complete and therefore truly general purpose (in an inconvenient way like the Turing machine itself). 2. The article on the history of computing does not have a thorough discussion. Science History 14:07, 26 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Calculating Space

The section says:

In 1967 Zuse also suggested that the universe itself is running on a grid of computers (digital physics); in 1969 he published the book Rechnender Raum (translated by MIT into English as Calculating Space, 1970). Since the publication of Stephen Wolfram's book A New Kind of Science, this idea has attracted a lot of attention, since there is no compelling physical evidence against Zuse's thesis. Critics of Wolfram's work claim that the fundamental ideas are essentially due to Zuse.

This is quite misleading - the idea attracted a lot of attention long before Wolfram wrote something about it in 2002. The movie The Matrix (1999) was perhaps the most popular work on the idea that the perceptible world is computed by a computer program. The well-known articles of Edward Fredkin (1980s) and Juergen Schmidhuber (1990s) on the computable universe also predate Wolfram. I'll try to correct this. Science History 11:29, 19 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] The copy needs improvement.

As of 29 July 2007, it is obvious that (1) at least the first section was written by someone whose native language is German (no native English speaker would write "the inventor of the Computers" -- and capitalizing "Computers" is also a giveaway) and (2) a Zuse advocate.

I am going to make take care of this. Jhobson1 16:10, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

172.173.164.166 made that change
info on the IP you are talking about:
OrgName: America Online
OrgID: AOL
Address: 22000 AOL Way
City: Dulles
StateProv: VA
PostalCode: 20166
Country: US
not exactly in Germany, 217.236.230.194 21:31, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] First computer 'sold'

I would go along with the most recent edit, BINAC was sold in the same sense that the Z4 was, and earlier - the Ferranti was sold as a production machine (multiple copies), but the Z4 was like BINAC in being a single machine shipped to a customer Hpengwyn (talk) 22:33, 21 November 2007 (UTC)