Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/09/26/missing-manual-for-worlds-oldest-surviving-computer-found.html
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Well, given that it was invented by Konrad Zuse, who famously refused to join the Nazi Party, I’m not sure that’s entirely a fair statement.
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Change the word invented to implemented?
Also, Nazis still exist and may be inventing computers as we speak.
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Wasn’t it hard to move?
About 1963 Popular Electronics had an article about a ubiversity refurbishing a used computer. It had gone through a hurricane, and written off, so the scrap landed at the university.
It was a mess, not just because of water damage, but because the wiring had just been cut in irder to transport it. So just saw the cables.
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This! Oh, so much fucking this.
As a German who had a great-grandfather whose apartment was “rearranged” by the SA a couple of times for being a member of the Confessing Christians, this statement always pissed me off.
Not all Germans were Nazis.
Germans betwen 1933 and 1945 =/= Nazis!
Just think that people in 80 years (if mankind exists that long) would say that all Amerikans in our time would be Tr*mpists, and you see how infuriating this generalisation is.
On topic, cool find. The Z4 was always one of the most important parts of computer history. Zuse founded a computer company after the war, that existed well into the 1960s, just a fun fact.
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Hm.
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I do embedded systems work. It would probably be more likely for me to find a manual about how this chipset worked then to find an actual manual about how current x86 chipsets work (an up-to-date manual). 
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inventor of the world’s first programmable computer, the Z3
Vice should know better than to write sentences like that. There are at least a dozen machines laying claim to that title.
You’d think that “first programmable computer” is a pretty clear line in the sand, but it isn’t. Some claim to be the first “electronic” computer but others say no, they are electromechanical because relays were involved. Are you talking analog or digital? Analog computers for trigonometry that were programmable in a form predated this. Are you assuming electrical? The US Navy had all-mechanical ballistics computers in ships that were programmable by swapping cams. What do you consider “programmable”? Swapping plugs or tubes? Does it have to have software? How do you define software? Is a rack of swappable gears a program? Automated looms in the 19th century were programmable, so why don’t they count?
. . .
Dear reporters who cover computing history,
Please stop calling things “first” because it punches up your opening paragraph. You are always wrong.
Love,
VeronicaConnor
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I also greatly suspect titles that end with a question mark.
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Chips? In 1945?
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I agrree its like saying all americans are trumpites.
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In the meantime, has anyone tried turning it off and on again?
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Why? Is Sir Clive Sinclair a Nazi?
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Translated from the original German “Zuse Z4 für Dummköpfe”.
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But no one reads the manuals anyway…
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Doesn’t seem so.
For me, Jews and football go together like a horse and carriage. Throughout the 1950s (when I was a boy) we lived in Hendon, opposite the home of Wingate Football Club, the only Jewish team in the Football League. Their motto was Amicitia per Ludis, and their intention was to Hellenise the image of the Jew, to act as an antidote to the skeletal image of victim… Wingate’s founding fathers were wise enough to recognise that football is more than a game. Simon Kuper agrees, seeing it as a place where the Holocaust met daily life…
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