Konrad Zuse studied machine building, architecture and construction engineering at the Technical College of Berlin and, after completing his studies, he worked as a structural engineer at the Henschel aeroplane plant. Driven by the aim to make structural calculations as quickly as possible he decided to set off on an independent path as an inventor one year later and set up a workshop in his parents’ flat. It was there in 1941 that he created the first fully automatic, program-controlled computer in the world. It had a memory, a central processing unit made of telephone relays and it was used in aeroplane construction. Two years later, the original was destroyed in an air raid.

After the war Zuse developed his invention further and with the Z4, he was able to present the first commercial computer in the world. His isolation from the technological developments that were taking place simultaneously in Great Britain meant that his equipment had little influence on the following generation of computers. In 1969, the founder and long-time director of the Zuse company (later taken over by Siemens) published his book Der rechnende Raum (Calculating Space) in which he describes the universe as a gigantic data processing machine. In addition to numerous other honours, Konrad Zuse was awarded eight honorary doctorates and two honorary professorships.