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Speaker 1: This Day in History Class is a production of I

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hello everyone, I'm Eves and welcome to this

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Speaker 1: stand History Class, a podcast that brings the past to

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Speaker 1: the president. Today is May twelve. The day was May twelfth.

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Speaker 1: Ninety one. German civil engineer and inventor Conrad Susa unveiled

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Speaker 1: the first fully functional programmable computer, the Z three. Susa

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Speaker 1: worked in Nazi Germany during World War Two, and his

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Speaker 1: work wasn't widely known outside of Germany until after the war.

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Speaker 1: Susa got his degree in civil engineering in Germany and

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Speaker 1: nine five. Once he graduated, he began working at the

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Speaker 1: Hinshel Aircraft Factory. They're human computers with desk calculating machines

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Speaker 1: performed all the calculations necessary for work. Susa became interested

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Speaker 1: in designing a programmable mechanical calculator for engineers, and he

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Speaker 1: began working on his own time to build one. He

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Speaker 1: called his first attempt at a mechanical computer, the V one,

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Speaker 1: later renamed the Z one. He built the Z one

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Speaker 1: in his parents home using metal plates, pins, and discarded

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Speaker 1: movie film. His former classmate Helmut Schreyer helped him build

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Speaker 1: the computer, which was completed in ninety eight. Schreyer was

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Speaker 1: a member of the Nazi Party. Susa was not a

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Speaker 1: Nazi Party member, but he also has not been documented

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Speaker 1: opposing working for the Nazi war effort. The Z one

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Speaker 1: was completely mechanical and binary. It could compute addition, subtraction, multiplication,

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Speaker 1: and division, but it was pretty slow and unreliable. In

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Speaker 1: n nine, when World War two broke out, Susa was

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Speaker 1: drafted into the infantry, but he was allowed to keep

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Speaker 1: working on his machines. He soon built his next prototype machine,

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Speaker 1: the Z two. It had mechanical memory like the Z one,

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Speaker 1: but it used electrical relays. The Z three, though improved

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Speaker 1: on the Z two machine. The German government supported German

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Speaker 1: Research Institute for Aviation partially funded the computer. The Z

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Speaker 1: three was built with telephone relays. On top of the

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Speaker 1: four arithmetic operations, the Z three could also compute the

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Speaker 1: square root of a number. It was able to work

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Speaker 1: with infinite numbers, and it was more reliable than the

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Speaker 1: previous machines since it could work for hours without mechanical

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Speaker 1: parts getting stuck. The Z three read its programs off

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Speaker 1: of punched film. On May twelve, ninety one, SUSA presented

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Speaker 1: the computer to the public in Berlin. The Z three

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Speaker 1: was used to help calculate aerodynamics and aircraft design. Though

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Speaker 1: the government gave SUSA some support, it denied funding for

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Speaker 1: some of his research when they deemed it unimportant. In

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Speaker 1: the early nineteen forties, British code breakers were developing the

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Speaker 1: Colossus Marked one, which was a different computer designed to

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Speaker 1: decipher the messages not sea sent during World War Two.

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Speaker 1: The Mark one was a general purpose electro mechanical computer

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Speaker 1: conceived by Howard Aiken and designed and built by IBM

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Speaker 1: in the US. It was also developed in the early

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Speaker 1: nineteen forties, but the Z three is considered to be

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Speaker 1: the world's first programmable, fully automatic computer. The Z four,

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Speaker 1: the first commercial digital computer, was the next machine in

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Speaker 1: the series. SUSA sold an option on his patent rights

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Speaker 1: to IBM, but the sale was never completed. He continued

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Speaker 1: to work on computers, wrote the programming language plank call cool,

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Speaker 1: and later received several awards for his work, but his

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Speaker 1: work was not widely recognized outside of Germany until the

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixties, and his early machines did not have much

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Speaker 1: of an influence on the field of computing. The Z

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Speaker 1: one and Z three were destroyed in World War two,

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Speaker 1: but in the nineteen sixties, Susa and other engineers and

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Speaker 1: his company built a reconstruction of the Z three. Susa's

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Speaker 1: legacy as an inventor in the history of computers is

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Speaker 1: now more recognized than it was in the past, but

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Speaker 1: it carries the weight of affiliation with Nazi Germany during

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Speaker 1: World War Two. I'm Eve Jeff Cote and hopefully you

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Speaker 1: know a little more about history today than you did yesterday.

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Speaker 1: And if you have any comments are suggestions, you can

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Speaker 1: send them to us at this day at I heeart

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Speaker 1: Instagram at t D I h C podcast. Thanks again

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Speaker 1: for listening to the show and we'll see you tomorrow.

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