Z4
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- Z4 at the ETH Zürich (1950)
The Z4
was the fourth computer of Zuse. He developed it during the war from 1942 to 1944 in Berlin. After the completion, he transported the machine disguised as a revenge weapon to the german Allgäu, to protect them from distruction, as it happened with the Z1-Z3. There it was rebuilt in 1950 and leased to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. At these the Z4 was the only working computer in Europe and the first commercial computer. Five years later, the Z4 was sold to French defense reseach institute, where the machine worked until 1959. One year later, the Z4 came to the german museum in Munich, where they can visit today.
The special feature of the Z4 was a plan production unit, so its possible to learn the programming of the machine in less than three hours. Konrad Zuse used for language constructs such as if statements, loops, quantifiers, lists etc. Computer should can solve problems that are more complicated than a simple calculation. He thought for example to the voice input, the control of tool machines and the use of board and card games.
The Z4 consists of about 2500 relays and 21 sep-switches, the memory was still mechanicly, such as the Z1. The word length was increased to 32Bit and the clock frequency to about 40Hz. The Z4 needs for an addition 0.4 seconds. In addition to the operations of the Z3, the Z4 could execute many more special operations, such as the calculation with Pi or with a sign.
