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computers
Like the Volkswagen Beetle and modern freeway systems, the Telex messaging network comes out of the early period of Germany’s Third Reich. Telex starts as a way to distribute military messages, but soon becomes a world-wide network of both official and commercial text messaging that will persist in some countries into the 2000s. Telex uses teleprinters, which date back to the 1910s for use in telegraphy. -
computers
Belgian Paul Otlet has a modest goal: collect, organize, and share all the world’s knowledge. Otlet had co-created a massive “search engine” starting in the early 1900s. His Mundaneum now combines enhanced card catalogs with sixteen million entries, photos, documents, microfilm, and more. He is working on integrating telegraphy and multiple media, from sound recordings to television. In the 1930s British writer H.G. Wells and American scientist Vannevar Bush are advancing similar goals—Wells wit -
computers
Called the “Model K” Adder because he built it on his “Kitchen” table, this simple demonstration circuit provides proof of concept for applying Boolean logic to the design of computers, resulting in construction of the relay-based Model I Complex Calculator in 1939. That same year in Germany, engineer Konrad Zuse built his Z2 computer, also using telephone company relays. -
computers
Built by Westinghouse, the relay-based Elektro robot responds to the rhythm of voice commands and delivers wisecracks pre-recorded on 78 rpm records. It appeared at the World's Fair, and it could move its head and arms…and even "smoked" cigarettes. -
computer
The Z3, an early computer built by German engineer Konrad Zuse working in complete isolation from developments elsewhere, uses 2,300 relays, performs floating point binary arithmetic, and has a 22-bit word length. The Z3 was used for aerodynamic calculations but was destroyed in a bombing raid on Berlin in late 1943. Zuse later supervised a reconstruction of the Z3 in the 1960s, which is currently on display at the Deutsches Museum in Munich.
