Konrad Ernst Otto Zuse (* June 22nd 1910 in Deutsch-Wilmersdorf, today in Berlin) is a German engineer of construction, inventor and entrepreneur.
At the early age of 14, he tinkered with inventions; „Zuses Mandarinenautomat“ (Zuse's mandarine vending machine) would eject a fruit and change if one threw in a coin. He called himself a „Bummelstudent“ (slacking student). As a 17-year-old he studied at the Technische Hochschule Berlin-Charlottenburg, at first Machine construction, then Architecture and finally construction engineering, but found his Studies to be boring. In 1935, he finished his studies with a Diploma. After this, he worked at first as a Structural engineer at the Henschel Flugzeug-Werke AG in Schönefeld near Berlin, but quit this job quite soon and created an inventor's workshop in the apartment of his parents. Here, he created the Z1, a programmable calculating machine, which didn't have full functionality yet though, because it worked mechanically. Zuse was able to infect other people with his enthusiasm so much, that they repeatedly gave him money – his father even got reactivated from retirement to co-finance the development – or donated their hours of work.
During World War II, Konrad Zuse was drafted twice, but never participated in a fight. With the Help of Herbert Wagner – Leader of the Sonderabteilung F at the Henschel Flugzeug-Werke AG, in which remote-controlled Gliding bombs were developed – he succeeded in becoming „unabkömmlich“ (in a reserved occupation) and got an employment at Henschel. There, he worked on the Gliding bomb Hs 293 and developed Special calculators for measuring wings.
The Z1, which consisted of 30,000 mechanical parts was the first computer which worked with binary floating point numbers and already had an input-output device, a control unit, a memory, and a reader which read the Programs from punched film strips. The Z1 never worked that well because of Problems with the mechanical Precision; the mechanical switchgears got stuck regularly. Of Charles Babbage – whom Zuse acknowledged as „de[r] eigentliche[...] Vater des Computers“ (the actual father of the computer) – he only learned long after the end of the World War. While he was still working on the Z1, he translated the mechanical circuitry into electro-mechanical Relay technics. His collaborator Helmut Schreyer suggested to him in 1937 using Vacuum tubes instead of Relays, but at this time he called it a "Schnapsidee" (crazy idea). At first, Zuse only tried the new Technology with fixed-point numbers at a Prototype Z2, which he finished in 1939. In 1940, he presented the apparatus to the technical Director of the Deutsche Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt Günther Bock, who after seeing this declared himself to be willing to co-finance the development of the Z3, with 25,000 Reichsmark (about 100,000 OTL Euro in 2020).
In 1937, Zuse re-discovered the propositional calculus during the work on his first Computer. In the same year, he submitted two Patents, which anticipated a von Neumann Architecture.
As early as in his youth, Zuse had the Talent to project his Visions in artistic Forms onto Paper. Sometimes he signed his oil paintings, chalk drawings, and Linocuts with the Pseudonym Kuno See.
He is an Atheist.
