Zuse Z4

The Z4 in the Deutsches Museum (Munich)

Electromagnetic relay of the Z4

The Zuse Z4 is a digital computer developed by Zuse Ingenieurbüro und Apparatebau , which is made up of 2200 relays . It has an electromechanical memory that can hold 64 numbers.

development

The Z4 was built from 1942 to 1945 as a further development of the Zuse Z3 in Berlin. In order to give it more flexibility from the programming side, it was intended for the connection of several scanners (tape reader) and hole punches (tape punch). In addition to keys and lamps, punched strips were the input and output medium of this computer. Shortly before completion in the spring of 1945, the Z4 was relocated to Göttingen in the aerodynamic testing facility of the KWI for flow research . There it was completed and the first program-controlled calculations could be carried out. At the beginning of April 1945 she was brought to southern Germany, she survived the chaos of war, first in a shed in Hinterstein im Allgäu, and later in a flour warehouse in Hopferau .

First commercial computer

In 1950 the Z4 was the only working computer in continental Europe. In 1950, Professor Eduard Stiefel's Institute for Applied Mathematics at ETH Zurich brought the Z4, which had been repaired by Zuse KG, to Zurich on a rental basis. This made the Z4 the world's first commercial computer and available for use a few months earlier than the UNIVAC .

In its early expansion stages, the Z4 did not have a conditional jump instruction , so it was initially not a Turing-powerful universal computer. At the request of the numerical experts at ETH Zurich, this function was built in around 1950.

The Z4 served as the central computer of the ETH Zurich from 1950 to 1955 and also brought Stiefel the knowledge for the construction of his own computer ERMETH . Their limited memory for intermediate values had a certain influence on the details of the algorithms subsequently developed at the institute.

Subsequently, the Z4 1955 near Weil am Rhein sold to a French military research institute in Basel, where a relay controlled ferrite 1957 core memory was the logical information per ferrite core could save.

Whereabouts

According to the same source, the Z4 was given to the Deutsches Museum in Munich in 1960 and has been part of the computer science exhibition at the Deutsches Museum since 1988.
According to another source, the Z4 came from Finland with cut harnesses to the basement of the Siemens Museum in Munich, from there to Bad Hersfeld in 1980 and then back to Munich, to the German Museum.

Comparison with other early computers

Computer model	country	Installation	Floating point arithmetic	Binary	Electronically	Programmable	Mighty Turing
Zuse Z3	Germany	May 1941	Yes	Yes	No	Yes, using punched tape	Yes, without any practical use
Atanasoff-Berry computer	United States	Summer 1941	No	Yes	Yes	No	No
Colossus	UK	1943	No	Yes	Yes	Partly, by rewiring	No
Mark I.	United States	1944	No	No	No	Yes, using punched tape	Yes
Zuse Z4	Germany	March 1945	Yes	Yes	No	Yes, using punched tape	Yes, without any practical use
Zuse Z4	Germany	around 1950	Yes	Yes	No	Yes, using punched tape	Yes
ENIAC	United States	1946	No	No	Yes	Partly, by rewiring	Yes
ENIAC	United States	1948	No	No	Yes	Yes, using the resistor matrix	Yes

Other Zuse calculators

Zuse Z1 (1937)
Zuse Z2 (1939)
Zuse Z3 (1941)
Zuse Z22 (1955)
Zuse Z25 (1963)

literature

Raúl Rojas (Ed.): The calculating machines by Konrad Zuse , Berlin / Göttingen / Heidelberg 1998.
Colloquium "50 years of program-controlled calculating machine" . In: Deutsches Museum, Wissenschaftliches Jahrbuch 1992/93, Munich 1993.
Raúl Rojas: Konrad Zuse's Legacy: The Architecture of the Z1 and Z3. In IEEE Annals of the History of Computing , 19, 2, 1997, 5-16.
Jürgen Alex, Hermann Flessner, Wilhelm Mons, Horst Zuse: Konrad Zuse: The father of the computer . Parzeller, Fulda 2000, ISBN 3-7900-0317-4 .
Jürgen Alex: Ways and wrong ways of Konrad Zuse . In: Spectrum of Science 1/1997, ISSN 0170-2971 .
Jürgen Alex: On the influence of elementary propositions of mathematical logic in Alfred Tarski's on the three computer concepts of Konrad Zuse . Chemnitz University of Technology 2006.
Jürgen Alex: On the creation of the computer - from Alfred Tarski to Konrad Zuse . VDI-Verlag, Düsseldorf 2007, ISBN 978-3-18-150051-4 , ISSN 0082-2361 .
Konrad Zuse: The computer - my life's work , 3rd edition. Springer, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-540-56292-3 .

Individual evidence

↑ Konrad Zuse: The computer - my life's work , 3rd edition. Springer, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-540-56292-3 .
↑ Herbert Bruderer: Konrad Zuse and the ETH Zurich - On the 100th birthday of the computer science pioneer Konrad Zuse. Festschrift of the ETH Zurich. 2nd improved and greatly expanded edition. February 2011, 40 pages
↑ Roland Baumann: How the world got into the computer. In: ETH Zurich. August 16, 2018, accessed on August 7, 2020 (with references to practical experience in operation).
↑ Raúl Rojas: Konrad Zuse and the conditional jump . Informatik-Spektrum, Vol. 37, Issue 1, pp. 50-53. (pdf, FU Berlin)
^ The Z3 and Z4 by Konrad Zuse. In: German Museum. Retrieved August 6, 2020 .
↑ 100 years of Konrad Zuse (Wolfgang Back)

[1] Konrad Zuse: The computer - my life's work , 3rd edition. Springer, Berlin 1993, ISBN 3-540-56292-3 .

[2] Herbert Bruderer: Konrad Zuse and the ETH Zurich - On the 100th birthday of the computer science pioneer Konrad Zuse. Festschrift of the ETH Zurich. 2nd improved and greatly expanded edition. February 2011, 40 pages

[3] Roland Baumann: How the world got into the computer. In: ETH Zurich. August 16, 2018, accessed on August 7, 2020 (with references to practical experience in operation).

[4] Raúl Rojas: Konrad Zuse and the conditional jump . Informatik-Spektrum, Vol. 37, Issue 1, pp. 50-53. (pdf, FU Berlin)

[5] The Z3 and Z4 by Konrad Zuse. In: German Museum. Retrieved August 6, 2020 .

[6] 100 years of Konrad Zuse (Wolfgang Back)