Hacker News Reader

Comment by jdietrich | Hacker News Reader

Zuse is an interesting example of history being written by the victors. Ask any German who invented the computer and they'll tell you it was Konrad Zuse, but he is almost completely unknown elsewhere.

Turing did brilliant work, but Zuse did the job of Turing and Tommy Flowers, working in isolation with very limited resources.

View on HN

As can be seen on Wikipedia: [1] vs. [2] - the English version of "computer science" does not mention Zuse. Time to change?

Similarly, the German version of "Computer" mentions Zuse 20 times [3]; the English version starts describing the Z2 [4].

Quite fascinating how Wikipedia is written through the local lense.

[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Informatik#Entwicklung_moderne...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_science

[3] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer#Electromechanical

Excellent catch! I love Wikipedia with all their faults but probably we need not so difficult to build tools to recognize anomalies between Wikipedia cultures... sorry, languages.

English and German sources are more likely to be accessible to people working in English and German, respectively, and less in the reverse. And Wikepedia is all about sources. So not surprising, but worth fixing.

You know, this first springed to my mind. As a kid, I had an old teacher whose father was an official in one of the nazi-backed regimes. There we were, talking about computer history and he was very upset (like really agitated) about this, saying to me that Zuse (Z3, basically) was the first digital computer / inventor. He said it was the case of history being written by the victors. I semi-believed him, considering his personal history, but was something I would hear quite often later in Germany as well.

I never realized that Zuse is unknown in the US. I am Austrian and I am pretty sure I have learned about Zuse in school. I assume the situation in Germany is similar. Now I am curious what people from other countries were taught. Did you learn anything about Zuse?

Spaniard here. I had no idea about Zuse prior to a few minutes ago.

i only know about him because of my attraction to unusual ideas brought me once to a page about rechnender raum when i was a teenager.

As a German, I'm pretty sure most Germans have no idea who invented the computer or think it was someone in America. My parents, and I think the same goes for many others, heard the name of this guy for the first time today, when newspapers and radio programs brought short articles about him. One reason may be that, at least when I was in school, in computer science classes, no history about that field was taught at all.

It's a bit sad how many misconceptions about .. just about everything. I wish people would like to unfold origins, history with precision. Not sure if they don't care, prefer to be fed a nice story, or just don't have the time.

> "Zuse is an interesting example of history being written by the victors."

This may hold true for the Zuse story, but he's also an example for german history about german scientists. While the Wikipedia article (both german and english) mentioning his ties to the NS and the german defence industry of that time, you probably find no hint about that at universities where lecture halls are named after him. For example in Hamburg, where the only "real" lecture hall at the CS department is named after him. In the small exhibition about his scientific life beneath this lecture hall you don't find a word about that (at least the last time I was there).

Zuse is known to everyone who's taken even a fairly superficial look at the history of the development of computing machines. It's also inaccurate to compare his work to Turing's, Zuse's focus was practical. He certainly did not independently develop Turing's theoretical work, nor did he really need to for his purposes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com