[HN Gopher] Reconstruction of Konrad Zuse's Z3 Computer
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Reconstruction of Konrad Zuse's Z3 Computer
Author : andsoitis
Score : 69 points
Date : 2025-10-03 20:47 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (dcmlr.inf.fu-berlin.de)
(TXT) w3m dump (dcmlr.inf.fu-berlin.de)
| Rochus wrote:
| Great project.
| lysace wrote:
| Konrad Zuse performed an amazing feat.
|
| It's also fun to imagine this happening in e.g. the 1860s instead
| of the 1930s/1940s. I believe the tech was there (because of
| telegraphs), the production of relays just wasn't industrialized
| yet, so everything would be larger, handmade and more expensive.
| TheAmazingRace wrote:
| Agreed. Though I bet the performance of such a computer would
| barely crack kHz territory.
| flohofwoe wrote:
| kilo-Hertz was sound-barrier territory even in the in the
| 1930s ;)
|
| E.g. Z1 was running at 1Hz, Z2 at 5Hz and Z3 at 5..10Hz.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z1_(computer)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z2_(computer)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z3_(computer)
| TheAmazingRace wrote:
| Then I was an order of magnitude off!
| lysace wrote:
| https://technicshistory.com/2017/01/29/the-relay/
|
| > In 1837, American scientist and teacher Joseph Henry took
| his first tour of Europe. During his visit to London, he made
| a point of visiting a man he greatly admired, the
| mathematician Charles Babbage. Accompanying Henry were his
| friend Alexander Bache, and his new acquaintance and fellow
| experimenter in telegraphy, Charles Wheatstone. Babbage told
| his visitors of his upcoming appointment to demonstrate a
| calculating machine to a member of Parliament, but was even
| more excited to show them his plans for another machine,
| "which will far transcend the powers of the first..." Henry
| recorded the outlines of Babbage's plan in his diary.
|
| So close! Henry made the electromagnet practical. Babbage
| "originated the concept of a digital programmable computer"
| as per Wikipedia.
| shakna wrote:
| Just a note on no man being an island - there's a bit of
| debate on how much of the Analytical Engine was Babbage,
| and how much of it was Lovelace.
| lysace wrote:
| > there's a bit of debate on how much of the Analytical
| Engine was Babbage, and how much of it was Lovelace.
|
| No there isn't. That "debate" is about who wrote the
| first program for the Analytical Engine (which I didn't
| mention).
| shakna wrote:
| There's no debate Babbage was behind the Difference
| Engine.
|
| However, Lovelace's article on the Analytical Engine did
| not just expand it by demonstrating a programming
| language. It included physical differences to Babbage's -
| and this is because she didn't just sit and watch, she
| assisted on the design of the machine itself.
|
| > Again, it might act upon other things besides number,
| were objects found whose mutual fundamental relations
| could be expressed by those of the abstract science of
| operations, and which should be also susceptible of
| adaptations to the action of the operating notation and
| mechanism of the engine. Supposing, for instance, that
| the fundamental relations of pitched sounds in the
| science of harmony and of musical composition were
| susceptible of such expression and adaptations, the
| engine might compose elaborate and scientific pieces of
| music of any degree of complexity or extent.
| f1shy wrote:
| He was the first hacker as far as I know. He was constantly
| making jokes, laughing at formal things. I was in the Zuze
| Museum (his house), and I remember I think in his master Thesis
| he made some jokes (I think wrote some numbers in binary, which
| were easy to mix, like 2 as 10) which for the time, I think
| were relatively bold. He had a very "hacker" sense of humor. He
| was called out a couple of times, but had no real respect for
| imposed authority.
| b00ty4breakfast wrote:
| the batteries alone would've taken up a building, I reckon.
| They didn't have dynamos or anything like that at industrial
| scale until the end of the century
| Animats wrote:
| The ideas were sort of there, but the hardware... Hollerith's
| original census machine in 1888 [1] got data processing going,
| but it wasn't a volume product. Bear in mind that neither low-
| cost steel or milling machines existed at the time. Making
| things with large numbers of precision parts was not yet
| commercially feasible. The clock industry eventually cracked
| that, but metal clocks and watches at low cost in high volume
| took until the 1890s.
|
| Making insulated wire was really hard. Before plastics, wire
| insulation was varnish or fabric. I restore old Teletypes as a
| hobby. The oldest one I have working is from about 1926. All
| the wiring insulation had decayed and had to be replaced.
| Reliable wire is surprisingly modern. Reliable rubber
| (neoprene) is only from WWII. Plastics are even later.
|
| [1] https://www.census.gov/about/history/bureau-
| history/census-i...
| lysace wrote:
| > Making insulated wire was really hard.
|
| Fair point. This would probably have made the 1860 relay
| computer another 2x more expensive.
| memsom wrote:
| Advent of computing podcast did a series on his computers, of
| which this is a link to one of the episodes:
| https://adventofcomputing.com/?guid=170d60ae-c534-46f6-968b-...
| spogbiper wrote:
| great podcast, highly recommend if you have any interest in the
| history of computing
| 7373737373 wrote:
| Klemens Krause has been documenting his restoration of the
| mechanical Z1 replica:
| https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtpOUadaBh31n6Pdscwhwopmh...
| riedel wrote:
| One still can see an operational original Z22 in my home town [0]
| . Quite impressive (would be Z7 by normal counting, Zuse also
| invented creative versioning of CPUs I guess)
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z22_(computer)
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