Z3 World's First Programmable Digital Computer
Designed by German inventor Konrad Zuse¹ in 1938 and completed on May 12, 1941. This one tonne machine was powered by 2600 relays consuming 4 kW of power. The 22-bit Z3 computer² could store 64 words using 1408 relays, calculated entirely in floating point³, and programs were stored on punched celluloid tape (movie film). Using a 5.3 Hz clock, it could add, subtract, multiply, and divide as well as extract square roots. Additions took 0.8 s and multiplications 3 seconds! Input and Output was facilitated by a terminal, with a special keyboard for input and a row of lamps to show results. All computing and storage in the Versuchsmodell 3 was done with ordinary binary telephone relays, although their contacts were carefully adjusted so that their opening and closing times were all within a specific range in order to synchronize the running of the whole system. The Z3 did not survive the war and was destroyed in a bombing raid on Zuse's workshop in 1945.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z3_(computer) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z3_(computer))
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating-point_arithmetic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating-point_arithmetic)
Reference:
Computers in Germany
https://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/Reckoners-ch-2.html (https://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/Reckoners-ch-2.html)
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If all it did was only math functions, that would make it a calculator not a computer. :tongue: kind of impressive still for the early 40's. No vacuum tubes, but I bet the relays made a hell of a lot of racket.
No; according to Wikipedia, at any rate, "[it] was the world's first working programmable, fully automatic digital computer".
Moreover, they say "the Z3 was Turing-complete". That's definitely a programmable computer there.
I'll take their word for it, as they're usually not too bad on purely technical topics.
I found it on FaceAche :smiley:
This machine wasn't programmable, but it was probably the world's first computing machine:
The Antikythera Mechanism (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/an-ancient-greek-astronomical-calculation-machine-reveals-new-secrets/).
The amazing thing is that this thing was built way back in the BCs.
The WikipediA has some good info': https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism)
I recently saw a great documentary about the Scanning and re-construction of the unit, very interesting.