Beginnings of a revolution - The Computing Universe: A Journey through a Revolution - page 21

Other Beginnings

Computer development was not limited to the United States and the United Kingdom; other countries,
including Germany, the Soviet Union, and Australia, also pioneered the development of digital electronic
computers.

Konrad Zuse, the Z series, and Plankalkül

In Germany, Konrad Zuse ( B.1.10 ) is now widely acknowledged as
one of the founding fathers of computing. He worked on his designs in
isolation during the difficult times leading up to the war years. In 1941,
his first operational electromechanical computer, the Z3, contained
some architectural features that, independently of Zuse's work, have
become key principles for computer designers. Unlike the ENIAC, Zuse's
machine used binary encoding for both data and instructions, signifi-
cantly reducing the complexity of the design. The Z3 was the first auto-
matic, program-controlled, relay computer, predating Howard Aiken's
Mark I machine. By 1943, Zuse was constructing a new Z4 computer.
At the height of the wartime bombing of Germany, Zuse managed to
transport the Z4 from Berlin and hide it in a stable in a small village in
the Bavarian Alps. Zuse also developed a programming language called
Plankalkül (plan calculus). In this language he introduced the concept
of assignment and loops that are now seen as key components of pro-
gramming languages. After the war, in 1949, Zuse founded a computer
company, Zuse KG; he sold his first Z4 to ETH in Zurich in 1950. His com-
pany continued to develop new machines; he sold 56 of his Z22 vacuum
tube machines for industrial and university research. The company was
bought by Siemens in 1967.

B.1.10 Konrad Zuse (1910-95) inde-
pendently designed and constructed
computers during World War II.
Until recently, his pioneering work
was not widely known although
IBM had taken an option on his
patents in 1946. His programming
language, Plankalkül, was never
implemented in Zuse's lifetime. A
team from the Free University of
Berlin produced a compiler for the
language in 2001.

Sergei Lebedev, MESM, and BESM

Sergei Alekseyevich Lebedev ( B.1.11 ) was one of the pioneers of
Soviet computing. Under his leadership after the war, a secret electronic
laboratory was established in the outskirts of Kiev, where he and his
team started to build the first Soviet computers. By December 1951, they
had a functioning machine, and this marked the beginning of indige-
nous Soviet computers. They produced computers that ranged from large
mainframe computers of the classes BESM, URAL, and Elbrus to smaller
machines such as MIR and MESM. These names are largely unknown out-
side of Russia, but in scientific and engineering circles behind the Iron
Curtain they were held in great respect. The BESM computers formed
the backbone of Soviet computing; about 350 were produced. BESM-1
was built in 1953, and the last of this series, BESM-6, in 1966. However,
in 1967 a political decision was taken to copy IBM machines. This was
the end of indigenous Soviet computing and a bitter disappointment for
many of the Soviet computer pioneers.

B.1.11 Sergei Alekseyevich Lebedev
(1902-74) was the founder of the Soviet
computer industry. A keen alpinist as
well as a brilliant engineer, he climbed
Europe's highest peak, Mount Elbrus. In
1996 he was posthumously awarded the
Charles Babbage medal by the IEEE soci-
ety. His name in Cyrillic script is written
Сергей Алексеевич Лебедев.