Konrad Zuse's Early Computers

Raul Rojas is Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Nevada, Reno. He was Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the Freie Universität Berlin from 1997 to 2020. Previously, he held professorships at the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and the Technical University of Vienna. Raul Rojas' field of research is the theory and applications of artificial intelligence algorithms. He has published two books on neural networks with Springer-Verlag, as well as the book “Die Rechenmaschinen von Konrad Zuse” (1998), a volume that finds its continuation in this new book. Prof. Rojas is a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences, received the National Science Prize of Mexico in 2015, and was named Professor of the Year in Germany in 2014.

“This book explicitly aims to pay tribute to Zuse’s wide-ranging merits. … All chapters (some translated from German) are meant to be read as stand-alone pieces, tied together by an instructive preface. The book is intended to address ‘curious and adventurous’ students and practitioners of computer sciences, yet it can also inspire readers from historical disciplines. Compiling thirty years of research, however, this book documents Rojas’s remarkable, long-lasting efforts to keep the memory of Zuse alive.” (Michael Homberg, Technology and Culture, Vol. 66 (1), January, 2025)

• 1. Konrad Zuse and the Dawn of the Computer Age.- 2. The Race to Build the Computer in World War II.- 3. The Z1: Architecture and Algorithms of Zuse’s First Computer.- 4. The Z2 and the Cipher Machine.- 5. The Architecture of the Z3.- 6. How to Make Zuse’s Z3 a Universal Computer.- 7. The S1 and S2: Zuse’s Work for the German Military 1941-1945.- 8. The Architecture of the Z4.- 9. The Conditional Jump: Making the Z4 Universal.- 10. Plankalkül.- 11. Zuse’s Computer for Binary Logic.- 12. The First Code for Computer Chess.- 13. The Reconstruction of Konrad Zuse’s Z3.- 14. Epilogue.