Researchers found the manual for the world's oldest surviving computer

erek

erek

[H]F Junkie
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"The computer itself has quite the backstory. German civil engineer Konrad Zuse invented the Z4 under the Nazi regime and is the likely author of the manual, according to Bruderer. At one point, the Nazis wanted Zuse to move the computer to a concentration camp, where the regime used forced labor to build rockets and flying bombs. He refused, and instead moved the Z4 to a barn in a remote town to wait out World War II.

Mathematician Eduard Stiefel later acquired the Z4 for ETH Zurich’s Institute for Applied Mathematics. It spent a few years at the French-German Research Institute of Saint-Louis before the Z4 was transferred to the Deutsches Museum in 1960."

https://www.engadget.com/oldest-computer-manual-zuse-z4-161214346.html
 
I've seen the Z4 at the Deutsches Museum. Granted, my last visit was in the late 80s...but I have yet to set foot into a better museum.

https://www.deutsches-museum.de/en/exhibitions/communication/computers/universal-computers/


d_dm_edv_zuse_z4.jpg
 
The oldest surviving computer is a gear based analog computer for astronomy from ancient greece.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

Analog computer pre-dated electronic computers. They got their name from people, called computers, whose job was to brute force solve math problems by hand. The main thing the new electronics ones brought to the table was re-configurability.
 
HeadRusch said:
"You are standing in an open field west of a white house, with a boarded front door "......
Click to expand...

>Open door

"The door is locked."

>Unlock door

"What do you want to unlock the door with?"

>Penis

"You can't do that! In order to use items that are hidden from prying eyes, use the LEWD command."



...ah, Infocom games. My best friend was cleaning out his hoarder dad's basement and gave me a fully sealed brand new Lost Treasures of Infocom CD-ROM edition for PC/Mac this past weekend.

The C128 and 8088 that I used to play those TBA's on seem technologically closer to this Z4 than it does to even my 8 year old 3770K.
 
Jagger100 said:
The oldest surviving computer is a gear based analog computer for astronomy from ancient greece.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

Analog computer pre-dated electronic computers. They got their name from people, called computers, whose job was to brute force solve math problems by hand. The main thing the new electronics ones brought to the table was re-configurability.
Click to expand...
Heard about it. Fancy watch. Sounds like the Z4 helped develop the first jets and rocket technology? Now that's cool.
 
Indeed, a fancy watch........just made like 100 years before Christ when Sun Dials were all the rage and mechanical devices this complex wouldn't come along for another thousand years. Fucking Atlantis I'm guessing....
Vocal.venture.Otto_.2.jpg
 
Relays have several speed advantages, mechanical movement not being one of them...

These days we have extremely low resistance transmission gate multiplexers that can
do all the cool old relay tricks without mechanical wait. What tricks you ask? Instant look-
through carry, borrow, and magnitude comparisons come to mind. Your carry chain just
peers through a series of switches closed in advance by A vs B. No wait for combinatorial
ripple or look-ahead.

74CBT3251,3253,3257 for example: Switches open or close in 6nS and logic just flows
through sideways 250pS later. With a good plan, you can set all or most switches in
parallel time. Such that only +250pS propagation delay per gate applies after the first.
Closed switches also work backwards, every multiplexer a de-multiplexer depending
how you choose to wire them.

And of course this style of logic is even faster when it doesn't involve external traces.
Pass-through logic has been around a while. But until recently, high resistance and
capacitance required repeaters that slow propagation and interrupt transparent look-
through from one side to the other.

I've seen fragments of Zuse schematics, but never a manual. Where to download?
 
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