Customer Reviews

The Computer-My Life

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Zuse explains how and why he build the world's first computer. Easy to understand, but not belittling. This book is essential for anyone interested in the history of CS.

This book and its author are just amazing. Konrad Zuse is definitly a unique character and so is his story of the invention of the FIRST computer during World War II in Berlin.

This autobiography, the only one by a first generation computer constructor is fascinating in several respects. First, Konrad Zuse working in almost total intellectual isolation (from the mainstream US and UK efforts in calculator/computer development) between 1936 and 1945 developed one of the most sophisticated and Turing-complete computers prior to ENIAC and most other US efforts (the only other comparable binary computer--of more limited capacity--at the time was the Antanasoff-Berry Computer at Iowa State University). Secondly, unlike other computer pioneers of that era he was an artist and mechanical/civil engineer rather than a physicist, mathematician or electrical engineer, and his artistic and mechanical studies strongly influenced this development. Also, we have no autobiography of Mauchly, Eckert, Antanasoff, Turing, or Aiken giving their personal reminiscences of that pioneering era in computation. Finally, beside being a pioneer in computer construction he, Zuse, formally specified the first higher-level computer language the Plankalkul between 1941 and 1945. This specification although theoretical was sufficiently complete that the Free University of Berlin implemented it in 2000. Zuse is also known as a pioneer in suggesting later in 1967 that the universe is a computational process occurring in physical space, a theory later espoused by Edward Fredkin and Stephen Wolfram.

The personal and technical story of a long and productive life is fascinatingly told in this outstanding autobiography.

---Ira Laefsky, MSE/MBA
Information Technology Consultant formerly on the Senior Staff of Arthur D. Little, Inc. and Digital Equipment Corporation

An excellent source of information for those who mistakenly thought that ENIAC was the first general purpose computer.