Talk:Z3 (computer)

message: What about the other computers Z1, Z2 and Z4 and Z5? --HJH
:Re: the above, I note that the Z1 is also mentioned on Computer. -- IMSoP 23:36, 8 Dec 2003 (UTC)
thread_title: Info wanted on Z1, Z2, Z4, and Z5

message: According to the TU-Berlin Z3 web page, the machine had 600 relays in its FPU plus 1600 in its "constant & variable memory" (actually, 1408 for the 64 words of 22 bits, and some read/write access logic I guess, making the total roughly 1600 gates). Hence, I get 600 + 1600 = 2200. --Wernher 23:26, 20 Oct 2004 (UTC)
replies: text: This is wrong. I have his book (reference given in article). It reads: "600 Relais im Rechenwerk, 1400 Relais im Speicherwerk"). Which is 2000. I think we should give the book more trust than the TU-Berlin webpage—until we know more :). I have thus changed the article. --Ligulem 12:16, 2 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: No. of relays in Z3 implementation

message: Does anyone have any authoritative sources that describe what the Z3 was intended for and whether it was put into operational use? It would be good to have this information in the article. Adrian Robson 16:10, 10 June 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: AFAIK was Zuse an civil engineer, and his main goal was to create a device to lift of him the burden of calculating boring statics. --195.82.76.228 14:19, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Operational use 

message: The ENIAC article says: "The Z3, Colossus and ENIAC were developed independently and in secret as part of each country's war effort in World War II. The Z3 was destroyed by Allied bombing of Berlin in 1944.... For these reasons, histories of computing formerly mentioned only ENIAC and the Harvard Mark I from this period."
Certainly Colossus was part of the war effort but is this true for the Z3? The Z3 article is rather sparse and doesn't mention it. But the Konrad Zuse article says: "Zuse never received the official support that computer pioneers in Allied countries, such as Alan Turing, managed to get. The telephone relays used in his machines were largely collected from discarded stock. A request by his co-worker Helmut Schreyer to the war-time government for federal funding for an electronic successor to the Z3 was denied as 'strategically unimportant'."
Does anyone know which article is correct? Was the Z3 part of the war effort or not? As for "histories of computing (mentioning) only ENIAC and the Harvard Mark I", maybe this statement is just based on English language histories. Is it certain that German language histories of computing mentioned only ENIAC and the Harvard Mark I? Adrian Robson 16:22, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: While building the Z3 Zuse received financial support from the federal DVL (Deutschen Versuchsanstalt für Luftfahrt, i.e. German Experimentation-Institution for Aviation), who desired automating their extensive calculations. But this restricted official financing does not make the Z3 a German wartime effort. The Zuse article is right. Christian Storm 18:00, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

text: Is it correct to use the word "federal" when talking about the German Government (of the Nazi era)? Sounds a bit too American to my ears. 213.169.27.166 22:45, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  "Federal" is used in the sense of "referring to the central government", meaning that it was a nationwide organization and not part of a "Gau" etc. When using the word federal there's obviously no bijective mapping possible. Christian Storm 15:41, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Was Z3 part of war effort? 

message: This section about Charles Babbage is incorrect:
'A working model was not made in his lifetime, presumably because its decimal design was much more complicated than the binary Z3.'
The decimal design was no more complicated for a mechanical computer than binary would have been. Babbage considered using binary but decided that it would be inefficient and with not enough of a benefit in speed to be worthwhile.
This bit is also incorrect:
'If Babbage's friend Ada Lovelace was the first theoretical programmer, writing programs for a machine that did not exist, then Zuse was the first practical programmer.'
Lovelace wasn't the first programmer (as nice as that myth is) - Babbage was.
My sources for this are a paper by Allan Bromley called 'Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine, 1838' and a book called 'Charles Babbage: Pioneer of the Computer' by Anthony Hyman (though I can probably produce more if you need it...)
144.138.81.100 12:47, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Incorrect information about Babbage 

message: The "On this day..." on the main page, and the article, note (without citation) that "on May 12 [of 1941], [the Z3] was successfully presented to an audience of scientists in Berlin".  I'm interested in this.  Which scientists were present, where was the unveiling made, and what capabilities were demonstrated?  Was there any press of the presentation?  Did news of the demonstration reach beyond Germany?  Does any documentary evidence exist of the presentation (writings, photographs)? Robert K S 17:00, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Presentation 

message: How can Claude Shannon have introduced the idea the article implies the Z1 used in 1937 if Zuse started building and probably finished the Z1 in 1936? Looks to me as if he introduced the idea and Mr. Shannon merely got the same idea one year later? Then, I don't see his work as worth mentioning?
--77.57.201.49 (talk) 08:44, 8 April 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Chronology

message: Can someone research it's date of destruction? This page says it was in 1943. The ENIAC page says 1941. Encyclopedia Britannica says April 5, 1945  and the Zuse article says 1944 (see above discussion). Or maybe we should just be generic and say "destroyed in World War II" and cite both Zuse and EB? --Aaronp808 (talk) 04:27, 5 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Destruction Date 

message: The first sentence of the summary suggests the Z3 was the "world's first working programmable, fully automatic computing machine" because of it's conditional branching.  Yet, the last section (Relation to Turing machine) seems to directly contradict ... "there was no conditional branch instruction".  I've no idea whether it had or did not have "conditional branching", except to point out that the text from different sections seems self contradictory. R Comroe.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.223.251.138 (talk) 16:21, 12 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: what the statement is saying is that many people consider conditional branching is one of the characteristics of a programmable computer and the Z3 had all the characteristics except that one. Conditional branching was in Zuse's original plans in 1936 but just wasn't important enough to implement for the Z3. The hardware microcode by the way did have conditional branching. The closest the user programming had to branching was stopping on exception conditions, the design of which was very advanced indeed. Dmcq (talk) 15:00, 26 October 2009 (UTC)

text: If you read talk::Turing completeness I prove conclusively that you can emulate a "SUBLEQ" machine on a computer that has no conditional branch  (I include working C source code for such an emulators - which self-evidently has no conditionals in it!).   So long as a program can loop - even totally unconditionally - and even if it could only loop by wrapping it's program counter from the last instruction in memory back to the first - then it can emulate SUBLEQ - which is in itself known to be turing complete.  Since Church-Turing thesis says that anything that can emulate a turing engine is turing complete - then we can definitively say that the Z3 was indeed turing complete without the need for conditional branching.  Trouble is - finding a reference for my WP::NOR problem. SteveBaker (talk) 21:53, 3 July 2019 (UTC)
thread_title:  Conditional Branch 

message: The main page of this article would be improved if there were a discussion of the Z3 in science fiction literature.
Has this computer ever been mentioned in science fiction?   Dexter Nextnumber (talk) 03:35, 27 March 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: It would have to contribute in a significant way to a story, not just be incidental. I haven't heard of such a use and I don't think not having a science fiction link is much of a loss. Dmcq (talk) 12:52, 27 March 2010 (UTC)

text: I think a section on potential uses that the Z3 might have been put to, had it gained official backing, might be interesting and worthwhile. Funding for research is always a problem and examples of missed opportunities are good ammunition when making a case for finance.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 31.68.76.108 (talk) 15:25, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Z3 in science fiction literature 

message: How many Z3s were made? Manufacturing lends credence. 171.66.161.158 (talk) 22:24, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Just the one I believe. What do you mean by credence here? Dmcq (talk) 22:42, 4 April 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Production figures? 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified