"The Z3 was demonstrated in 1998 to be, in principle, Turing-complete. However, because it lacked conditional branching, the Z3 only meets this definition by sp

"The Z3 was demonstrated in 1998 to be, in principle, Turing-complete. However, because it lacked conditional branching, the Z3 only meets this definition by speculatively computing all possible outcomes of a calculation." this is the one factor that makes me question whether it should be considered first.. conditional branching is pretty significant to what we consider a computer. better informed people than myself have come up with a variety of takes on this, i read all that i see because i find Zuse fascinating but i still am not sure if its fair to call one system or the other "first". the advent of computing podcast has some interesting well researched episodes, scroll down a little to 145 and 146: https://adventofcomputing.com/ https://adventofcomputing.com/