Konrad Zuse's 1941 Patent Application - Unesco

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Memory of the World Register - Nominated Documentary Heritage -...ad Zuse's 1941 Patent Application "Rechenvorrichtung" - Germany Legal Information Identification Im Haselgrund 21 D-38088 Hünfeld Germany Name of Institution: n/a ● Owner: Gisela Zuse ● Custodian: Gisela Zuse Legal Status: ● Category of ownership: Private ● Details of legal and administrative provisions for the preservation of the documentary heritage: The "first original", as it may be called, of the patent application is lost; some minor quality copies and several later drafts do exist ● Accessibility: Copies are available on demand, providing scientific/historic interest [a transcription can be found in Rojas (1998) 111-141(-193), see Bibliography] ● Copyright status: The family of Konrad Zuse owns the copyright ● Responsible administration: The Kulturstiftung der Länder has been authorized by the Zuse family to take the necessary steps requested by the Memory of the World programme. Further information is available on request (see "Nominator", "Contact person"). ● Description: The patent application for what later became known as "The Computer". This is a typoscript of 48 pages, with an additional 12 pages of illustrations. Further, we have another most interesting situtation: There exist several drafts of different states of the patent application. This is obviously due to the fact that Zuse in the course of his discussions with the German patent office(s) – discussions which lasted for more than a quarter of a century – tried to comply to the requests made by the patent office, but also by several people and/or institutions having a stake in "computer patents". Every such draft or version contains some minor or major changes when compared to its predecessor, either in the wording of the description, or in the phrasing of the requests made by Zuse. Thus there is a chance to trace in details the development of one of the fundamental concepts of the 20th century. (An English translation of the patent application will be prepared in due course) It seems approriate to point out here that computer – even and especially in the English speaking world – did not then have the meaning it has today. In those days it meant a human being, doing calculations (either with or without the help of machines). Only several years later, some of the major US built machines of this kind, finished in the period 1943 through 1945 (Harvard Mark I, ENIAC etc), were the first devices to be generally called "computers" in its modern sense of the word. It is well known, even among data processing or computer science laymen, that concepts for this kind of machines existed well before the name "computer" could be given to them (e. g. the ideas of Leibniz, Babbage, Turing and others). However, there is no debate any longer about the priority of Konrad Zuse – concerning several aspects and many details, e. g. computer architecture, or the use of the binary system, or the identity between logical and mathematical operations, or the floating point representation of numbers etc –, and also about the fact that Konrad Zuse's "Z3", finished and demonstrated to several selected scientists on March 11, 1941, was the first fully functional computer in the modern meaning of the word, i. e. a universal, programme-controlled calculating or – as we would or should say today – computing device with the ability to be programmed also for non-numerical problems, e. g. chess. ● Bibliographic details: German Patent Application Nos. Z26476 (1941) and Z391 (1951) ● Visual documentation: Copies of the first three pages of the typescript are attached as well http://www.unesco.org/webworld/mdm/2001/nominations_2001/germany/zuse/form.html (2 sur 6) [29/10/2002 14:25:34]
Memory of the World Register - Nominated Documentary Heritage -...ad Zuse's 1941 Patent Application "Rechenvorrichtung" - Germany Management Plan as a picture of the reconstructed "Z3" (found today in the German Museum in Munich). ● History: Konrad Zuse (1910-1995) is now internationally recognized as the inventor and creator of the first programme-controlled universal calculating device – in short: of the Computer. He conceived of such a machine as early as 1936, and after some trials succeeded in demonstrating a working relay computer on May 12, 1941, to some 10 scientists, who reported favorably on this event. Zuse filed his patent application on July 16, 1941. The application was registered as Patent Application Z26476. Before the Patent Office of the "Third Reich" was closed in 1945, some exchange of questions, remarks, explanations, reformulations, etc. took place, but without a conclusion being reached. Two years after the German Patent Office was re-erected in 1949, the Zuse KG – the corporation that Konrad Zuse had founded in post-World War II Germany – filed a slightly revised application again in 1951 (now as Patent Application Z391). After many years of legal discussions, the Federal Patent Court of the Federal Republic of Germany eventually denied the patent on July 14, 1967, due to the "lack of 'height' necessary for an invention" (mangelnde Erfindungshöhe). Though formally correct, this decision on Zuse's patent application is part of what may rightly be considered one of the most curious misinterpretations in modern patent history. A similar event occurred in 1974 in the United States, when Judge Larson had to – and did! – decide who should be called "The Inventor of the Computer [in the U.S.A.]". His decision, too, may well have been formally correct, but is not – and cannot – be taken seriously by the public, nor is it supported by scientific and historical research. The invention of the computer in its modern meaning of the word is a unique feat, though it has been attributed to several people or groups of people. As this invention fell into the years shortly before and during World War II, the exchange of ideas was not as it used to be in "normal" times. Thus, several of these ideas did not surface until many years after they were conceived (and some of them are still withheld from the public, e. g. in Great Britain). There is an obvious importance in giving a closed concept of a universal computing device – programmable and not limited to numerical problems –, and this was what Konrad Zuse did in his patent application. Several of his ideas were "re-invented" independently, due to the circumstances mentioned above. But, as also pointed out in the Summary, there is no debate now as to who really was the computer pioneer who not only was the first to have a computer work, but who also – in the form of his patent application – "published" first on it. ● Bibliography: ❍ Ceruzzi, Paul E.: Reckoners. The Prehistory of the Digital Computer, from Relays to the Stored Program Concept, 1935-1945.– Westport, CT; London: Greenwood Press 1983 (= Contributions to the Study of Computer Science 1) ❍ Ceruzzi, Paul E.: A History of Modern Computing.– Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press 1998, pp. 1-12 (Introduction) ❍ Metropolis, Nicolas et al.: A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century.– Orlando [...]: Academic Press 1980, pp. 611-627 ❍ Petzold, Hartmut: Die Ermittlung des "Standes der Technik" und der "Erfindungshöhe" beim Patentverfahren Z391. Dokumentation nach den Zuse-Papieren.– Bonn: Gesellschaft für Mathematik und Datenverarbeitung mbH 1981 ❍ Randell, Brian (ed.): The Origins of Digital Computers. Selected Papers.– Berlin [...]: Springer 31982. ❍ Rojas, Raúl (Hrsg.): Die Rechenmaschinen von Konrad Zuse.– Berlin u. a.: Springer 1998 ❍ Zuse, Konrad: Der Computer – Mein Lebenswerk.– Berlin u. a.: Springer 1984 Digitizing the available documents, starting with the first patent application of June 1941 and continuing until the final decision of the Federal Patent Court of Germany. Assessment against the Selection Criteria http://www.unesco.org/webworld/mdm/2001/nominations_2001/germany/zuse/form.html (3 sur 6) [29/10/2002 14:25:34]
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Konrad Zuse's 1941 Patent Application - Unesco

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