The Computer-My Life - Hardcover

Zuse, Konrad

4.07 out of 5 stars

28 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0387564535 ISBN 13: 9780387564531

Publisher: Springer Verlag, 1993

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Konrad Zuse is one of the great pioneers of the computer age. He created the first fully automated, program controlled, freely programmable computer using binary floating-point calculation. It was operational in 1941. He built his first machines in Berlin during the Second World War, with bombs falling all around, and after the war he built up a company that was taken over by Siemens in 1967. Zuse was an inventor in the traditional style, full of phantastic ideas, but also gifted with a powerful analytical mind. Single-handedly, he developed one of the first programming languages, the Plan Calculus, including features copied only decades later in other languages. He wrote numerous books and articles and won many honors and awards. This is his autobiography, written in an engagingly lively and pleasant style, full of anecdotes, reminiscences, and philosophical asides. It traces his life from his childhood in East Prussia, through tense wartime experiences and hard times building up his business after the war, to a ripe old age and well-earned celebrity.

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Review

Personal computers didn't appear until the 1970s, but as early as 1941, the first automated, program-controlled, and freely programmable computer was up and running. The Computer-- My Life is the story of Konrad Zuse and his revolutionary invention--the computer (or mechanical brain as he liked to call it), which Zuse built in his parents' living room. Zuse writes his autobiography simply and directly to be accessible to a wide audience of non-technophiles and includes hand-drawn diagrams of computer functions, as well as cartoons from his younger years when he dreamed of becoming an artist. The book also includes appendices with detailed technical information for the more technical reader.