Zuse’s Z3, the world’s first programmable computer

On May 12, 1941, German engineer Konrad Zuse presented his Z3, the world’s first functional, automatic, programmable, Turing-complete computer. A.S.Ganesh tells you more about Zuse and how he was at the forefront of computing during the height of World War II…

Few fields have grown as rapidly as computing and computers have. If you are lucky to know aged people who’ve worked in the field, they might well tell you about the size and computing power of the devices at their disposal in their younger days. Your parents and teachers themselves should be able to tell you how rapidly things have changed in this area in the span of a few decades. And you yourself should be fully aware that the gadgets that we now carry in our palms probably are more powerful than the first computers that were built and occupied entire rooms!

In computer science, there is a term called Turing completeness, named after famed English mathematician and computer scientist Alan Turing. It describes the ability of a system to compute any possible calculation or programme. In other words, a system of rules is Turing-complete if it can be used to simulate any Turing machine. Z3, a computer built by German engineer Konrad Zuse, was the world’s first fully-functional programmable computer that was Turing complete.

Zuse (pronounced Tsoo-zuh) was born on June 22, 1910 in Deutsch-Wilmersdorf, now part of Berlin. He impressed his faculty during his school days with his many talents, but Zuse was most interested in painting.

For someone who went on to become an engineer and change the face of computing, Zuse enjoyed drawing. His Latin lecturer at school once discovered Zuse’s drawings of locomotives, and promptly brought it to the attention of the drawing master. In addition to being able to produce precise depiction of models, Zuse had an innate ability for caricatures and even considered a career as a commercial artist.

After he completed schooling, Zuse switched from mechanical engineering to study architecture, before finally settling on civil engineering. He believed that this would be perfect for him as it would enable him to combine the skills of an engineer and an artist.

While he obtained a degree in civil engineering in 1935, it wasn’t long before he was bored of all the tedium involved in the calculations that he constantly had to handle in his chosen stream. In 1936, he began assembling metal plates, pins and discarded movie film in his parents’ living room and the result was Z1 – the first of many mechanical computers that he built – in 1938.

From someone who worked on his own with the help of family members and close friends, Zuse soon had an assistant and also the backing of professors who supported his computer project. With the world about to be at war again, this backing was essential, as it afforded Zuse to be excused from military service and instead concentrate on his research.