The Computer - My Life

Konrad Zuse is one of the great pioneers of the computerage. He created thefirst fully automated, programcontrolled, freely programmable computer using binaryfloating-point calculation. It was operational in 1941. Hebuilt his first machines in Berlin during the Second WorldWar, with bombs falling all around, and after the war hebuilt up a company that was taken over by Siemens in 1967. Zuse was an inventor in the traditional style, full ofphantastic ideas, but also gifted with a powerful analyticalmind. Single-handedly, he developed one of the firstprogramming languages, the Plan Calculus, including featurescopied only decades later in other languages. He wrotenumerousbooks and articles and won many honors and awards. This is his autobiography, written in an engagingly livelyand pleasant style, full of anecdotes, reminiscences, andphilosophical asides. It traces his life from his childhoodin East Prussia, through tense wartime experiences and hardtimes building up his business after the war, to a ripe oldage andwell-earned celebrity.

Table of Contents:
1 Ancestors and parents — Early childhood memories — School days — Metropolis — Abitur.- 2 Studies (not without detours and by-ways) and general studies — First inventions — The Akademischer Verein Motiv — Student life between science and politics.- 3 The early years of the computer (and a digression on its prehistory) — Colleagues remember — From mechanics to electromechanics — Schreyer’s electronic computing machine — First outside contacts — Thoughts on the future.- 4 Outbreak of the war and (first) call-up — Structural engineer in aircraft construction — The Z2 and Z3 — Second call-up — Zuse Ingenieurbüro und Apparatebau, Berlin — The first process computer.- 5 Origins of the Z4 — News from the United States — Attempt at a Ph.D. dissertation — Computing machine for logic operations — Final months of the war in Berlin — The evacuation — Z4 completed in Göttingen — Final war days in the Allgäu.- 6 End of the war — Refugees in Hinterstein — The Plankalkül — The computing universe — Automation and self-reproducing systems — A logarithmic computing machine — Computer development in Germany and the United States — Move to Hopferau near Füssen — The mill of the Patent Office.- 7 The Zuse-Ingenieurbüro, Hopferau bei Füssen — First business partners: IBM and Remington Rand — The first pipelining design — Founding of ZUSE KG in Neukirchen — The Z4 in the ETH in Zurich — The computer in Europe: taking stock — Lost opportunities — The first German contract: the Z5.- 8 The partners leave — Computing machine for land use zoning — Electronics gains acceptance — First funds from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft — Losing one’s way (and possibly a lost opportunity) — The arrayprocessor — Custom work for geodesists — The Graphomat Z64 — Growth and crisis of ZUSE KG — The end.- 9 Free for science (again) — Honors — A look to the future.- Appendices.- 1. From Forms to Program Control.- 2. Construction of Devices.- 3. On Computer Architecture.- 4. On the Plan Calculus.- 5. Lecture on the Occasion of the Award of the Honorary Doctorate by the Technical University of Berlin (Extract).- 6. The Computer Did Not Fall from Heaven.- Notes.- References.- Name Index.- Computer Index.

Review :
From the reviews: “The book tells the story of an inventor and an entrepreneur. It is refreshing because it allows one to see things outside of the box, beyond the more traditional story, so that he or she can better appreciate key aspects of computing and computation. Furthermore, the book tells the story of a father, a hard worker, and a recognized inventor, including pictures and plenty of anecdotes. … The book is probably the only reliable source about Konrad Zuse’s life and contributions to the world.” (Hector Zenil, ACM Computing Reviews, November, 2011)