Konrad Zuse's Helix Tower [pdf]

https://www.iaarc.org/publications/fulltext/The_helix-tower_by_konrad_zuse_automated_con-_and_deconstruction.pdf

by xg15 • 10 months ago

89 6 10 months ago

xg15• 10 months ago

See here for a video: http://zuse-z1.zib.de/videos/ht.html

johndoe0815• 10 months ago

Zuse invented many more things than the first computer and first programming language - for example, an "Apparatus for controlling headlights by counterlight" already in 1958!

https://patents.google.com/patent/US3316442A/en

f1shy• 9 months ago

Was really the first commercial, programable, turing complete, binary (digital) computer. There were many special purpose built computers before, both analog and digital.

For previous art (but not built until much later) was Charles Babbage. Later came ENIAC, which is much more what we identify today with a computer.

adrian_b• 9 months ago

The computers of Zuse resembled much more a modern computer than ENIAC.

Also the electromechanical computers of Howard Aiken (made by IBM at Harvard, hence "Harvard architecture"), which were conceived as a modern implementation of the ideas of Babbage, and which preceded ENIAC, resembled much more a modern computer than ENIAC.

ENIAC, as actually said by its name (Electronic Numerical Integrator) was an electronic and digital version of the mechanical analog computers known as "differential analyzers", e.g. that of Vannevar Bush.

ENIAC was not as special purpose as the British Colossus, but it was not as general-purpose as the electromechanical computers of Aiken and Zuse that preceded it, which were really controlled by writing programs, not by reconfiguring a bunch of connections. ENIAC was more like an FPGA than like a computer.

The main connection between ENIAC and later electronic computers was in the digital electronic circuits used to built it, however even those were not completely original, as they have used information from the circuits used in the previous special-purpose electronic computer of John Vincent Atanasoff at Iowa State University, which in turn were based on the digital circuits invented in UK for the necessities of nuclear and elementary particle physics research during the decade preceding WWII.

IncreasePosts• 9 months ago

He was 79 years old when he started on this - I hope I retain that kind of mind that can play with ideas at that age

fritzo• 9 months ago

Zuse was a genius, but I feel Moses Schönfinkel should get credit for the first programming language with his S,K combinators, pre-dating even Church's λ-calculus.

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/12/where-did-combin...

Konrad Zuse's Helix Tower [pdf]

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