Quotes from Konrad Zuse

I have always had a predominantly visual approach to my environment.

The rattling of the relays of the Z4 was the only interesting thing to be experienced in Zurich's night life!

You could say I was too lazy to calculate, so I invented the computer.

Differential equations describe only the final condition in the case of the theory of ideally incompressible fluids. The actual process leading to establishment of the end condition of equilibrium from a state of rest is hardly conceivable without taking compressibility and braking processes into account.

Like Alan Turing, Zuse was educated in a system that focused on a child's emotional and philosophical life as well as his intellectual life, and at the end of school, like Turing, Zuse found himself to be something of an outsider—to the disappointment of his very conventional parents, he no longer believed in God or religion. (Jane Smiley (2010). The Man Who Invented the Computer)

Imagination," Zuse used to say, "is the key to all progress.

The concept of the computing universe is still just a hypothesis; nothing has been proved. However, I am confident that this idea can help unveil the secrets of nature.

Pulses themselves have a digital character, for they are normalized in intensity and duration; they are therefore digital, but their density (the number of pulses per unit time) can have any number of intermediate values, and it is therefore analog in character. A commonly-held opinion today is that the human nervous system operates on this principle.

The models of modern physics are concerned, therefore, both with con- tinuous and discrete values. It would seem appropriate to consider a hybrid system. It will be extremely difficult to find a technical model of a hybrid computer which behaves according to the laws of quantum physics.

It is interesting that a pair of isolated pulses yields a stable system: the emis- sion of two diverging digital particles (Fig. 19). Appar- ently only certain configura- tions are possible, while oth- ers are excluded or provide no stable results. This bears a certain similarity to some situations in quantum mechanics.

Cellular automatons provide an elegant solution when each cell contains a complete calculating system, as symbolically represented in Fig. 73. These single calculating systems contain both information-processing and information-storing elements.

The author has greatly enjoyed being able to discuss this subject with a few mathematicians and physicists. The greatest handicap to cooperation is certainly the difference in terms between the individual, specialized fields of knowledge. We hope that this chasm will be bridged in time and that through cybernetics, a true bridge between physics and the automaton theory can be built.

Horst was born precisely when Konrad was think- ing about Rechnender Raum for the first time (the common translation into English is Calculating Space but the phrase in his native German carries a lot more cognitive weight than its plain English counterpart, in light of the ideas treated in Zuse's piece: calculation, computation of nature, space and/or the universe).

The danger of computers becoming like humans is not as great as the danger of humans becoming like computers.

It is not true that virtually all news in a totalitarian state is false.

I remember mentioning to friends back in 1938 that the world chess champion would be beaten by a computer in 50 years time. Today we know computers are not far from this goal.