The user manual for one of the oldest digital computers in the world has been unveiled. With the help of this document, scientists can now understand how early computers functioned.
According to the Association for Computing Machinery, the Zuse Z4 is the oldest computer in the world to date. It was designed by German engineer Kondrad Zuse and manufactured in 1945.
The one-room-sized computer finally ended up at the Deutsches Museum in Munich, being frequently revisited and studied by various research institutes. Unfortunately, historians and curators have so far had very limited knowledge of how the system worked, relying in part on some of the eyewitnesses who have survived since it was in operation, as the device instructions had been lost long ago.
Conditional jumps, for example, were added as skills while the system was at ETH Zurich, but none of the witnesses knew how they were handled.
While at ETH Zurich, the computer was used to run calculations for the P-16 , a prototype Swiss fighter jet. It is this connection that led to the discovery of the lost user manual.
Evelyn Boesch's father, René Boesch, had worked at the Institute for Aircraft Statics and Aircraft Construction at ETH Zurich under Manfred Rauscher since 1956. Rauscher was an advisor to the aforementioned P-16 and it so happened that Boesch had a collect and preserve historical documents.
The Z4 manual was in his collection, along with notes on some fighter aircraft calculations.
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