Most of the “history” you see about computing, at least in the US, mentions either the Atanasoff-Berry computer or the English Colossus computer at Bletchley Park as the first modern programmable computer. Neither of those are true.
Konrad Zuse, who was born 123 years ago today, invented the first modern programmable computer in Germany in 1941. It was called the Z3. Later that year, he founded the first purely “computer” business and produced the Z4 for sale, which was the first commercial computer. If that wasn’t enough, he created the first high-level programming langage, Plankalkül. And just to top it all off, remember the physicists speculating that the universe is some sort of vast computer program? That was Zuse’s idea too; he proposed it in a book he wrote in the 1960s.
Zuse would probably be more widely known if he hadn’t had the misfortune of living in what was at the time Nazi Germany. News about his accomplishments wasn’t really available among the Allied countries, although IBM did purchase rights to his patents in 1946 (IBM has an unfortunate history involved with Nazi Germany too).
Zuse didn’t start his career in computers (well, he couldn’t have; they didn’t exist yet). He started work as an advertising designer, creating ads for Ford cars. Then he got a job as a design engineer at an aircraft factory. He found all the routine calculations he had to do very tiresome, so in the mid 1930s he designed a mechanical calculator. He was working in his parents’ apartment in Berlin, and finished his calculator, which he called the Z1, in 1936. It contained 30,000 metal parts. It didn’t work very well, though, because he couldn’t manufacture them precisely enough.
The Z1 and Zuse’s blueprints would be valuable historical artifacts, but they were destroyed during WWII. He was drafted into the military in 1939, but instead of sending him to the front lines, they gave him the resources to build his next idea, the Z2.
Most scientists and engineers work in a professional environment, where they can exchange ideas. Zuse didn’t. When he created the Z2 and Z3 he worked completely alone and hardly anyone even knew about the system. His systems were used for military purposes like calculating trajectories, but his proposal for a followup to the Z3, using electronic components, was rejected because the authorities thought it wasn’t important.
After the war, Zuse started his company to sell the Z4, and also worked on a PhD. His thesis described his programming language, Plankalkül, but it wasn’t as influential as it could have been because it wasn’t published until 1972.
His thesis was also rejected by his university because he forgot to pay the required fee. By all reports, he didn’t care. He never got much recognition for his groundbreaking work, but apparently that didn’t bother him either. After he retired, he went back to the arts and became a painter. Supposedly he was pretty good at it, and if you find one of his paintings, it’ll be signed “Kuno [von und zu] See.”
