Episode Details

In 1933 Konrad Zuse, a German civil engineer, caught the computing bug. It would consume the rest of his life. According Zuse he invented the world's first digital computer during WWII, working in near total isolation within the Third Reich. How true is this claim? Today we are looking at Zuse's early machines, the Z1, Z2, and Z3.

Selected Sources:

The Computer -- My Life, by Konrad Zuse

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1406.1886 - Z1 Architecture paper by Rojas

https://sci-hub.se/10.1109/85.707574 - Z3... Turing Complete? also by Rojas