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 th

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.