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From: Michael Kuyumcu on 4 May 2010 07:39
Dear hp48 members,

for all of you who might be interested in the history of computers,
their inventor, and his venturesome life...

The computer was invented in 1933 by Konrad Zuse, in Berlin, Germany.
The story of his life is quite intriguing. He built the first working
computer, the "Z1" (Zuse 1) in the living room of his parents, using
only metal sheets, glass panes, and parts from his childhood tool box.
The machine, when finished, weighed roughly a ton and could basically
perform any number of basic calculations as long as the programmer
didn't use more than 64 long-term storage registers (with a length of
22 bits each) and two special-purpose registers for calculations. The
programmed commands, punched in groups of six bits each into a strip
of paper, were read off the tape and executed purely mechanically.
Several years later, while he was working on another, improved,
successor, the "Z4", the British and American bomber pilots covered
Berlin with firebombs and fragmentation bombs, forcing Zuse to
evacuate his coworkers, his machine, and himself, in a breakneck
flight, to Bavaria, Germany. There he met the rocket scientist Wernher
von Braun, General Dornberger, and 30 SS men with a secret assignment.

For those of you who read German, a novel about his life, his dreams,
his entanglement with the Nazi regime, and his obsessions has just
been published by the Hamburg-based artislife publishing company:
"Konrad Zuse - Roman eines Lebens" (Konrad Zuse - the novel of a life)
by me, Michael Kuyumcu.

Regards,
From: PremiumBlend on 4 May 2010 11:01
On May 4, 7:39 am, Michael Kuyumcu <i...(a)noemanetz.de> wrote:
> Dear hp48 members,
>
> for all of you who might be interested in the history of computers,
> their inventor, and his venturesome life...
>
> The computer was invented in 1933 by Konrad Zuse, in Berlin, Germany.
> The story of his life is quite intriguing. He built the first working
> computer, the "Z1" (Zuse 1) in the living room of his parents, using
> only metal sheets, glass panes, and parts from his childhood tool box.
> The machine, when finished, weighed roughly a ton and could basically
> perform any number of basic calculations as long as the programmer
> didn't use more than 64 long-term storage registers (with a length of
> 22 bits each) and two special-purpose registers for calculations. The
> programmed commands, punched in groups of six bits each into a strip
> of paper, were read off the tape and executed purely mechanically.
> Several years later, while he was working on another, improved,
> successor, the "Z4", the British and American bomber pilots covered
> Berlin with firebombs and fragmentation bombs, forcing Zuse to
> evacuate his coworkers, his machine, and himself, in a breakneck
> flight, to Bavaria, Germany. There he met the rocket scientist Wernher
> von Braun, General Dornberger, and 30 SS men with a secret assignment.
>
> For those of you who read German, a novel about his life, his dreams,
> his entanglement with the Nazi regime, and his obsessions has just
> been published by the Hamburg-based artislife publishing company:
> "Konrad Zuse - Roman eines Lebens" (Konrad Zuse - the novel of a life)
> by me, Michael Kuyumcu.
>
> Regards,

It's a shame that Charles Babbage never finished
building his "difference engine" which to my
knowledge he began construction on in 1823.
He, in my opinion, invented the first computer.
From: m II on 5 May 2010 16:02
PremiumBlend wrote:

> It's a shame that Charles Babbage never finished
> building his "difference engine" which to my
> knowledge he began construction on in 1823.
> He, in my opinion, invented the first computer.


The Jaquard Loom card system was a great help, and:

=====================================
Between them, Babbage and Countess Lovelace greatly extended the
functionality and sophistication of calculating devices based on
mechanical gears. The engineering concepts and designs underlying this
work were principally the contribution of Babbage. These, important
though they were, represented no tremendous conceptual advance, however;
we have already seen that the exploitation of systems of mechanical
gears in order to emulate arithmetic processes, was central to the basic
calculating devices of Schickard, Pascal, and Leibniz dating from over
one hundred years earlier.

http://www.csc.liv.ac.uk/~ped/teachadmin/histsci/htmlform/lect4.html
=====================================

mike
From: Charles Richmond on 6 May 2010 18:57
Michael Kuyumcu wrote:
> Dear hp48 members,
>
> for all of you who might be interested in the history of computers,
> their inventor, and his venturesome life...
>
> The computer was invented in 1933 by Konrad Zuse, in Berlin, Germany.
> The story of his life is quite intriguing. He built the first working
> computer, the "Z1" (Zuse 1) in the living room of his parents, using
> only metal sheets, glass panes, and parts from his childhood tool box.
> The machine, when finished, weighed roughly a ton and could basically
> perform any number of basic calculations as long as the programmer
> didn't use more than 64 long-term storage registers (with a length of
> 22 bits each) and two special-purpose registers for calculations. The
> programmed commands, punched in groups of six bits each into a strip
> of paper, were read off the tape and executed purely mechanically.
> Several years later, while he was working on another, improved,
> successor, the "Z4", the British and American bomber pilots covered
> Berlin with firebombs and fragmentation bombs, forcing Zuse to
> evacuate his coworkers, his machine, and himself, in a breakneck
> flight, to Bavaria, Germany. There he met the rocket scientist Wernher
> von Braun, General Dornberger, and 30 SS men with a secret assignment.
>
> For those of you who read German, a novel about his life, his dreams,
> his entanglement with the Nazi regime, and his obsessions has just
> been published by the Hamburg-based artislife publishing company:
> "Konrad Zuse - Roman eines Lebens" (Konrad Zuse - the novel of a life)
> by me, Michael Kuyumcu.
>

If you are interested in Konrad Zuse, why *not* just read his
autobiography:

_Der Computer, Mein Lebenswerk_ auf Deutsch

_The Computer, My Life_, in English


Both are published by Springer-Verlag.


--
+----------------------------------------+
| Charles and Francis Richmond |
| |
| plano dot net at aquaporin4 dot com |
+----------------------------------------+
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