9 ms·

The long lost manual for the Zuse Z4 has been found

182 points by jdblair 6y ago

pmiller2 6y ago
Speaking of computers and manuals: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24612761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24612761
Commodore_64 6y ago
I'm happy that the manual was finnaly found.
082349872349872 6y ago
this week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24573125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24573125
- dang 6y ago
  Thanks! That submission didn't get as high on the front page as this one already has, and didn't get as much discussion as maybe it could, so I think we'll leave the current one up rather than marking it a dupe. I've de-baited the title though.
rkhassen9 6y ago
I wonder what “secrets” they found?
KingOfCoders 6y ago
Glad I now have a manual to my Z4 in the basement.
- KingOfCoders 6y ago
  Reread https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Should include "Don't be funny."
zurfer 6y ago
it's ironic that we have such a hard time preserving information of a technology that runs the world today, a technology that is called "information technology"
brodo 6y ago
Deutsches Museum has a great collection of computers, including a Cray 1 and an original Apple 1 kit donated by Steve Jobs. However, most of the exhibitions in Deutsches Musem - including the computer science one - seem to be stuck in the 90's.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- hans_castorp 6y ago
  > seem to be stuck in the 90's. Not sure if you would like to see newer machines or older ones. If you are complaining about the missing old ones, then it's not true. The Deutsches Museum in Munich as a Z3 and a Z4: https://www.deutsches-museum.de/ausstellungen/kommunikation/informatik/universalrechner/ https://www.deutsches-museum.de/ausstellungen/kommunikation/... It also has a "Siemens 2002" from 1960. https://www.deutsches-museum.de/ausstellungen/kommunikation/informatik/ https://www.deutsches-museum.de/ausstellungen/kommunikation/... And a UNIVAC I (IBM) from 1956: https://www.deutsches-museum.de/typo3temp/pics/c0ba1ee858.jpg https://www.deutsches-museum.de/typo3temp/pics/c0ba1ee858.jp...
  - detaro 6y ago
    I think they mean "stuck in the 90s" in the way of presentation and exhibition design, which I'd tend to agree with. They have a lot of cool artifacts, and I can totally see why older relatives raved about it, but to me it felt stuffy and drab compared to other museums when I was there a few years ago.
    - brodo 6y ago
      Exactly. Stuffy and drab is a great way to describe it. I was reminded of my school days a lot when I was there. There is a interactive game in the astronomy section which belongs in a museum for other reasons then it is.
  - johndoe0815 6y ago
    The Z3 in the Deutsches Museum is only a replica, but one built by Konrad Zuse and his company in the 1960s. The original machine was destroyed in WW2. The Z4, however, is the one and only original machine. If you´re interested in Zuse history, there´s a great exhibition of Zuse machines at the Huenfeld museum (the town where Zuse rebuilt his company after WW2): https://www.zuse-museum-huenfeld.de/ https://www.zuse-museum-huenfeld.de/ and the computing centre at Erlangen University (FAU) has restored their Z23 to working condition some years ago: https://www.video.uni-erlangen.de/search/term.html?q=Z23 https://www.video.uni-erlangen.de/search/term.html?q=Z23 The Technikmuseum in Berlin also has a Z3 replica built by Horst Zuse (Konrad Zuse´s son) and his students: http://z3-computer.de/ http://z3-computer.de/ Most of the linked pages are in German, the Erlangen page has some interesting videos.
akie 6y ago
There's a very lively startup scene in Berlin, but no-one in that scene seems to know that the world's first digital computer was built in Berlin. There's an obscure and easy to miss sign (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse#/media/File:2007-01-20_Gedenktafel_Zuse_Z3.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse#/media/File:2007-0...) on the house he lived in while working on it, and another sign at the technical university, but that's about it. No big festivities in his name, no commemorations, nothing. Just imagine if the first digital computer was built somewhere in the US or in the UK. I'm sure we'd hear about until the end of times. Strange how that works.
- imtringued 6y ago
  It probably has to do with world war 2. It wasn't regular Germany where it was built in. It was in a Germany that was controlled by an insane lunatic.
  - flohofwoe 6y ago
    I think that's also because Zuse was always relatively obscure during the war, he never was a "nazi celebrity" like Wernher von Braun. Zuse's computer experiments were not considered "vital to the war effort", funding got denied so it always remained a "basement project". And after the war computers were hardly the most important thing to work on in Germany either. Also AFAIK Zuse himself didn't consider his inventions all that important and earth-shattering, at least before and during the war, he "just" needed a tool to help with computations, so he built one.
  - Teever 6y ago
    Zuse is one of the more underappreciated figures in the foundational periods of computer science due to this fact. I find it quite interesting that the fact that he was on the losing side of that war meant that he had to make due with limited resources which positively influenced his design choices and as such shaped his perspectives of what computers can and should be. Neil Gershenfeld at the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms has often said that 'computer science is one of the worst things to happen to either computing or science. The canon of computer science that's currently taught prematurely froze a model of computation based on 1950s technology' I think you can see a sort of stunted alternate path of computation and the connection it has to the physical world in the kinds of projects that Zuse participated in post WWII: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odwgpKRnWM8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odwgpKRnWM8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxv4vDMOFCo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxv4vDMOFCo For various reasons Turing captures the contemporary pop culture imagination but I have a feeling that historians in 50-100 years will look back at Zuse as being equally if not more so influential. I bet that Von Neumann would get a chuckle at how influential his throw away architecture ended up being to our society and would agree with Gershenfeld about how unfortunate it is that its success prematurely froze the model of computation.
conradmartins 6y ago
Just to clarify the accusation, contrary to what the article says the computer hasn’t been invented by the Nazis. Being a German does not make you a Nazi. I hope it’s just an editorial mistake from the Verge.
formerly_proven 6y ago
I just recently learned just how underappreciated Zuse is. Besides the Z3 and Z4 being hugely modern machines while _also_ being the first programmable computers (load/store architecture, fixed length instructions, multiple stage execution with overlapping stages, 32-bit float [which he independently invented, but was previously discovered, but not implemented, once in 1914], branch delay slots), he suggested the structure for an optimizing compiler for numerical code as well as trying to patent super-scalar execution -- in the 1930s; the patent was eventually rejected as being "obvious" - in the 60s, years before the invention of Tomasulo's algorithm.
- MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
  „ Zuse is the nerd's nerd. Not only did he build the first programmable computer, he also was the first dude to grok digital physics and the idea that the universe may be a computer. Zuse's book 'Calculating Space' was written in the 60s, years before Fredkin et al. People thought he was insane. Consequently, he thought his intellectual life was over and actually went into startups later in life. Today, his ideas about the universe being computation are very trendy. Before his death, he was invited out to MIT and shown some love for his pioneering work.“ [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9200896 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9200896
RoutinePlayer 6y ago
Finally "found"?
dreamcompiler 6y ago
The Deutsches Museum in Munich is the most amazing engineering museum I've seen. I highly recommend it. I had all but forgotten about Zuse when I saw the computer mentioned in the article.
ashton314 6y ago
The Deutsches Technik Museum in Berlin is pretty incredible. They’ve got a reproduction of the entirely mechanical Z1-computer. (The original was destroyed in the war if I’m not mistaken.) If you’re ever in Berlin, be sure to check it out. Take the U1/U2/U3 to Gleisdreieck. It’s within walking distance from there.
phreeza 6y ago
It's fascinating that beside instructions on the conceptual level of how to operate the machine from a programming perspective, it also contains arts&crafts instructions on how to manually glue pieces of the command tapes together: https://www.e-manuscripta.ch/zut/content/pageview/2856533 https://www.e-manuscripta.ch/zut/content/pageview/2856533
codeulike 6y ago
Thought this was about Microsoft Zune, another legendarily obscure machine
FandangoRanger 6y ago
https://www.e-manuscripta.ch/zut/doi/10.7891/e-manuscripta-98601 https://www.e-manuscripta.ch/zut/doi/10.7891/e-manuscripta-9... Note the Vice article doesn't link to the manual directly, and the site it DOES link to has an incorrectly formatted link to the manual. Pretty sad show all around.
Minor49er 6y ago
Now that they have FTFM, will anyone RTFM?

182 points by jdblair 6y ago

Speaking of computers and manuals: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24612761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24612761

Commodore_64 6y ago

I'm happy that the manual was finnaly found.

082349872349872 6y ago

this week: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24573125 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24573125

dang 6y ago
Thanks! That submission didn't get as high on the front page as this one already has, and didn't get as much discussion as maybe it could, so I think we'll leave the current one up rather than marking it a dupe. I've de-baited the title though.

rkhassen9 6y ago

I wonder what “secrets” they found?

KingOfCoders 6y ago

Glad I now have a manual to my Z4 in the basement.

KingOfCoders 6y ago
Reread https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Should include "Don't be funny."

zurfer 6y ago

it's ironic that we have such a hard time preserving information of a technology that runs the world today, a technology that is called "information technology"

brodo 6y ago

Deutsches Museum has a great collection of computers, including a Cray 1 and an original Apple 1 kit donated by Steve Jobs. However, most of the exhibitions in Deutsches Musem - including the computer science one - seem to be stuck in the 90's.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hans_castorp 6y ago
> seem to be stuck in the 90's. Not sure if you would like to see newer machines or older ones. If you are complaining about the missing old ones, then it's not true. The Deutsches Museum in Munich as a Z3 and a Z4: https://www.deutsches-museum.de/ausstellungen/kommunikation/informatik/universalrechner/ https://www.deutsches-museum.de/ausstellungen/kommunikation/... It also has a "Siemens 2002" from 1960. https://www.deutsches-museum.de/ausstellungen/kommunikation/informatik/ https://www.deutsches-museum.de/ausstellungen/kommunikation/... And a UNIVAC I (IBM) from 1956: https://www.deutsches-museum.de/typo3temp/pics/c0ba1ee858.jpg https://www.deutsches-museum.de/typo3temp/pics/c0ba1ee858.jp...
- detaro 6y ago
  I think they mean "stuck in the 90s" in the way of presentation and exhibition design, which I'd tend to agree with. They have a lot of cool artifacts, and I can totally see why older relatives raved about it, but to me it felt stuffy and drab compared to other museums when I was there a few years ago.
  - brodo 6y ago
    Exactly. Stuffy and drab is a great way to describe it. I was reminded of my school days a lot when I was there. There is a interactive game in the astronomy section which belongs in a museum for other reasons then it is.
- johndoe0815 6y ago
  The Z3 in the Deutsches Museum is only a replica, but one built by Konrad Zuse and his company in the 1960s. The original machine was destroyed in WW2. The Z4, however, is the one and only original machine. If you´re interested in Zuse history, there´s a great exhibition of Zuse machines at the Huenfeld museum (the town where Zuse rebuilt his company after WW2): https://www.zuse-museum-huenfeld.de/ https://www.zuse-museum-huenfeld.de/ and the computing centre at Erlangen University (FAU) has restored their Z23 to working condition some years ago: https://www.video.uni-erlangen.de/search/term.html?q=Z23 https://www.video.uni-erlangen.de/search/term.html?q=Z23 The Technikmuseum in Berlin also has a Z3 replica built by Horst Zuse (Konrad Zuse´s son) and his students: http://z3-computer.de/ http://z3-computer.de/ Most of the linked pages are in German, the Erlangen page has some interesting videos.

akie 6y ago

There's a very lively startup scene in Berlin, but no-one in that scene seems to know that the world's first digital computer was built in Berlin. There's an obscure and easy to miss sign (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse#/media/File:2007-01-20_Gedenktafel_Zuse_Z3.jpg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse#/media/File:2007-0...) on the house he lived in while working on it, and another sign at the technical university, but that's about it. No big festivities in his name, no commemorations, nothing. Just imagine if the first digital computer was built somewhere in the US or in the UK. I'm sure we'd hear about until the end of times. Strange how that works.

imtringued 6y ago
It probably has to do with world war 2. It wasn't regular Germany where it was built in. It was in a Germany that was controlled by an insane lunatic.
- flohofwoe 6y ago
  I think that's also because Zuse was always relatively obscure during the war, he never was a "nazi celebrity" like Wernher von Braun. Zuse's computer experiments were not considered "vital to the war effort", funding got denied so it always remained a "basement project". And after the war computers were hardly the most important thing to work on in Germany either. Also AFAIK Zuse himself didn't consider his inventions all that important and earth-shattering, at least before and during the war, he "just" needed a tool to help with computations, so he built one.
- Teever 6y ago
  Zuse is one of the more underappreciated figures in the foundational periods of computer science due to this fact. I find it quite interesting that the fact that he was on the losing side of that war meant that he had to make due with limited resources which positively influenced his design choices and as such shaped his perspectives of what computers can and should be. Neil Gershenfeld at the MIT Center for Bits and Atoms has often said that 'computer science is one of the worst things to happen to either computing or science. The canon of computer science that's currently taught prematurely froze a model of computation based on 1950s technology' I think you can see a sort of stunted alternate path of computation and the connection it has to the physical world in the kinds of projects that Zuse participated in post WWII: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odwgpKRnWM8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odwgpKRnWM8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxv4vDMOFCo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pxv4vDMOFCo For various reasons Turing captures the contemporary pop culture imagination but I have a feeling that historians in 50-100 years will look back at Zuse as being equally if not more so influential. I bet that Von Neumann would get a chuckle at how influential his throw away architecture ended up being to our society and would agree with Gershenfeld about how unfortunate it is that its success prematurely froze the model of computation.

conradmartins 6y ago

Just to clarify the accusation, contrary to what the article says the computer hasn’t been invented by the Nazis. Being a German does not make you a Nazi. I hope it’s just an editorial mistake from the Verge.

formerly_proven 6y ago

I just recently learned just how underappreciated Zuse is. Besides the Z3 and Z4 being hugely modern machines while _also_ being the first programmable computers (load/store architecture, fixed length instructions, multiple stage execution with overlapping stages, 32-bit float [which he independently invented, but was previously discovered, but not implemented, once in 1914], branch delay slots), he suggested the structure for an optimizing compiler for numerical code as well as trying to patent super-scalar execution -- in the 1930s; the patent was eventually rejected as being "obvious" - in the 60s, years before the invention of Tomasulo's algorithm.

MrBuddyCasino 6y ago
„ Zuse is the nerd's nerd. Not only did he build the first programmable computer, he also was the first dude to grok digital physics and the idea that the universe may be a computer. Zuse's book 'Calculating Space' was written in the 60s, years before Fredkin et al. People thought he was insane. Consequently, he thought his intellectual life was over and actually went into startups later in life. Today, his ideas about the universe being computation are very trendy. Before his death, he was invited out to MIT and shown some love for his pioneering work.“ [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9200896 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9200896

RoutinePlayer 6y ago

Finally "found"?

dreamcompiler 6y ago

The Deutsches Museum in Munich is the most amazing engineering museum I've seen. I highly recommend it. I had all but forgotten about Zuse when I saw the computer mentioned in the article.

ashton314 6y ago

The Deutsches Technik Museum in Berlin is pretty incredible. They’ve got a reproduction of the entirely mechanical Z1-computer. (The original was destroyed in the war if I’m not mistaken.) If you’re ever in Berlin, be sure to check it out. Take the U1/U2/U3 to Gleisdreieck. It’s within walking distance from there.

phreeza 6y ago

It's fascinating that beside instructions on the conceptual level of how to operate the machine from a programming perspective, it also contains arts&crafts instructions on how to manually glue pieces of the command tapes together: https://www.e-manuscripta.ch/zut/content/pageview/2856533 https://www.e-manuscripta.ch/zut/content/pageview/2856533

codeulike 6y ago

Thought this was about Microsoft Zune, another legendarily obscure machine

FandangoRanger 6y ago

https://www.e-manuscripta.ch/zut/doi/10.7891/e-manuscripta-98601 https://www.e-manuscripta.ch/zut/doi/10.7891/e-manuscripta-9... Note the Vice article doesn't link to the manual directly, and the site it DOES link to has an incorrectly formatted link to the manual. Pretty sad show all around.

Minor49er 6y ago

Now that they have FTFM, will anyone RTFM?