The Z3's architect was a German engineer called Konrad Zuse, who
developed his first machine, the Z1, in his parents' living room in Berlin in 1938.
Although based on relays, the Z3 was very sophisticated for its time; for example, it
utilized the binary number system and could perform floating-point arithmetic.
Zuse was an amazing man who
was years ahead of his time. To fully appreciate his achievements, it is necessary to
understand that his background was in construction and civil engineering (not
electronics).
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The Z1 computer. In the foreground is the manual crank for driving the clock frequency by
hand.
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