Z3

computer The third computer designed and built by KonradZuse and the first computer to successfully run real

programs. The computer was ready in 1941, five years before

ENIAC.

Zuse began his work on program-driven calculating machines in

1935. His two predessors of the Z3, the Z1 and Z2, were

unsuccessful mechanical calculating machines. The Z3 was

delivered to the Deutsche Versuchsanstalt fur Luftfahrt

(German Experimental Department of Aeronautics) in Berlin and

was used for deciphering coded messages. In 1998, there may

still be models of Z3 in museums [where?].

The Z3 used about 2600 relays of the kind used in

telecommunications. Zuse wrote and implemented the language

Plankalkul on the Z3. Programs were punched into cinefilm.

Zuse built some more computers after World War II, including

the Z3's successor, the Z4, which was set up at ETH Zurich,

Switzerland.

Of the potential rival claimants to the title of first

programmable computer, Babbage (UK, c1840) planned but was

not able to build a decimal, programmable machine.

Atanasoff's ABC, completed in 1942, and Eckert and

Mauchly's ENIAC (US, 1945/46) were special purpose

calculators, like those of Pascal (1640) and Leibniz

(1670). None of these machines was freely programmable.

Neither was Turing et al.'s Colossus (UK, 1943-45).

Aiken's MARK I (1944) was programmable but still decimal,

without separation of storage and control.

[Features? Where was it designed? Contemporaries?]

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(2002-07-28)