General / Off-Topic a quiz

potsmoke66

potsmoke66
do you know what's that?
z3.jpg

the name of the pic is suspicious.
 

Michael Brookes

Game Director
I believe the picture name is correct:

Many reference resources state that the first large-scale digital program-controlled computer was the Harvard Mark 1, which was developed by Howard H. Aiken (and team) in the United States in 1944. However, today it is widely accepted that a program controlled computer called the Z3 had been completed by Konrad Zuse in Germany in 1941, which means that the Z3 pre-dated the Harvard Mark I. Maybe the main cause that Konrad’s machines were not counted in the "official" history of computers (except in Germany) is the fact that he was on the wrong side of the WW II.

Although based on relays, the Z3 was very sophisticated for its time; for example, it utilized the binary number system and could perform floating-point arithmetic which could be used for complicated arithmetic calculations.

Konrad Zuse (1910-1995) also developed the first real programming language, Plankalkül (“Plan Calculus”) in 1944–45. Zuse's language allowed for the creation of procedures (stored chunks of code that could be invoked repeatedly to perform routine and subroutine operations such as taking a square root, and structured data (such as a record in a database, with a mixture of alphabetic and numeric data representing, for instance, name, address, and birth date). In addition, it provided conditional statements that could modify program execution, as well as repeat, or loop, statements that would cause a marked block of statements or a subroutine to be repeated a specified number of times or for as long as some condition held.

Zuse was an amazing man who was years ahead of his time. To fully appreciate his achievements, it is necessary to understand that his background was in construction and civil engineering - not electronics.
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Michael
 

Sir.Tj

The Moderator who shall not be Blamed....
Volunteer Moderator
Sir.Tj
How did you get a picture of my PC?????:eek::eek:

Michael you spoilsport :D

It's Frontiers new machine for writing E4 isn't it?
 

potsmoke66

potsmoke66
wow :cool:

ok, no surprise that one of the devs knew it

i wonder in what strange mood i was then to post that

and no TJ, it's my actual machine i write my statements on :D

i like this one,
It's Frontiers new machine for writing E4 isn't it?
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could be a reason why this takes a little longer
 
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potsmoke66

potsmoke66
i guess it must have been because i want to show sometimes what's the difference between then and now

not that it is a old overaged predator of a computer
no
but that it was a generation of engineers that did things only for the thing itself
fascinated about technology and not bored of

i guess i have read in advance to that a statement of a german engineer from the 50's
showing off the problems some had with technology allready then

like it would have been something only for sophisticated or better educated people, a strange class of weirdos or nerds.

it's a quite long statement and he starts in stoneage so i won't post it here all.

but we need more of that spirit, i strongly believe.

some of the best parts was
a german philosopher has claimed, technology has no morality, is completely indiscriminate, only a tool. this degrades the technician to a honorless creature. physicians, medics, jurists have honor out of their profession itself.
even teachers, politicians, government will be honored through their work. only a technician (or engineer) should have no such honorability? is he (he is) condemned to do his work only for functionality, to follow strict orders?
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Frank

Frank
If you're going to resurrect a thread from so long ago I might as well link another photo of Konrad Zuse himself

zuse_z3_lg.jpg
 
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