Not Hacker News Logo

Not

Hacker

News!

Home
Hiring
Products
Companies
Discussion
Q&A
Users
Not Hacker News Logo

Not

Hacker

News!

AI-observed conversations & context

Daily AI-observed summaries, trends, and audience signals pulled from Hacker News so you can see the conversation before it hits your feed.

LiveBeta

Explore

  • Home
  • Hiring
  • Products
  • Companies
  • Discussion
  • Q&A

Resources

  • Visit Hacker News
  • HN API
  • Modal cronjobs
  • Meta Llama

Briefings

Inbox recaps on the loudest debates & under-the-radar launches.

Connect

© 2025 Not Hacker News! — independent Hacker News companion.

Not affiliated with Hacker News or Y Combinator. We simply enrich the public API with analytics.

Not Hacker News Logo

Not

Hacker

News!

Home
Hiring
Products
Companies
Discussion
Q&A
Users
  1. Home
  2. /Discussion
  3. /Konrad Zuse's Helix Tower [pdf]
  1. Home
  2. /Discussion
  3. /Konrad Zuse's Helix Tower [pdf]
Last activity about 1 month agoPosted Oct 7, 2025 at 4:44 PM EDT

Konrad Zuse's Helix Tower [pdf]

xg15
89 points
6 comments

Mood

calm

Sentiment

positive

Category

other

Key topics

Konrad Zuse
Architecture
Automation
Computer History
Debate intensity20/100

The Hacker News community shares and discusses a PDF about Konrad Zuse's Helix Tower, a conceptual design for an automated construction and deconstruction system, highlighting Zuse's innovative and lesser-known contributions.

Snapshot generated from the HN discussion

Discussion Activity

Light discussion

First comment

4m

Peak period

3

Day 5

Avg / period

2

Key moments

  1. 01Story posted

    Oct 7, 2025 at 4:44 PM EDT

    about 2 months ago

    Step 01
  2. 02First comment

    Oct 7, 2025 at 4:48 PM EDT

    4m after posting

    Step 02
  3. 03Peak activity

    3 comments in Day 5

    Hottest window of the conversation

    Step 03
  4. 04Latest activity

    Oct 13, 2025 at 1:42 AM EDT

    about 1 month ago

    Step 04

Generating AI Summary...

Analyzing up to 500 comments to identify key contributors and discussion patterns

Discussion (6 comments)
Showing 6 comments
johndoe0815
about 2 months ago
3 replies
Zuse invented many more things than the first computer and first programming language - for example, an "Apparatus for controlling headlights by counterlight" already in 1958!

https://patents.google.com/patent/US3316442A/en

f1shy
about 2 months ago
1 reply
Was really the first commercial, programable, turing complete, binary (digital) computer. There were many special purpose built computers before, both analog and digital.

For previous art (but not built until much later) was Charles Babbage. Later came ENIAC, which is much more what we identify today with a computer.

adrian_b
about 1 month ago
The computers of Zuse resembled much more a modern computer than ENIAC.

Also the electromechanical computers of Howard Aiken (made by IBM at Harvard, hence "Harvard architecture"), which were conceived as a modern implementation of the ideas of Babbage, and which preceded ENIAC, resembled much more a modern computer than ENIAC.

ENIAC, as actually said by its name (Electronic Numerical Integrator) was an electronic and digital version of the mechanical analog computers known as "differential analyzers", e.g. that of Vannevar Bush.

ENIAC was not as special purpose as the British Colossus, but it was not as general-purpose as the electromechanical computers of Aiken and Zuse that preceded it, which were really controlled by writing programs, not by reconfiguring a bunch of connections. ENIAC was more like an FPGA than like a computer.

The main connection between ENIAC and later electronic computers was in the digital electronic circuits used to built it, however even those were not completely original, as they have used information from the circuits used in the previous special-purpose electronic computer of John Vincent Atanasoff at Iowa State University, which in turn were based on the digital circuits invented in UK for the necessities of nuclear and elementary particle physics research during the decade preceding WWII.

IncreasePosts
about 2 months ago
He was 79 years old when he started on this - I hope I retain that kind of mind that can play with ideas at that age
fritzo
about 2 months ago
Zuse was a genius, but I feel Moses Schönfinkel should get credit for the first programming language with his S,K combinators, pre-dating even Church's λ-calculus.

https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2020/12/where-did-combin...

xg15Author
about 2 months ago
See here for a video: http://zuse-z1.zib.de/videos/ht.html
View full discussion on Hacker News
ID: 45508611Type: storyLast synced: 11/20/2025, 1:39:00 PM

Want the full context?

Jump to the original sources

Read the primary article or dive into the live Hacker News thread when you're ready.

Read ArticleView on HN
Not Hacker News Logo

Not

Hacker

News!

AI-observed conversations & context

Daily AI-observed summaries, trends, and audience signals pulled from Hacker News so you can see the conversation before it hits your feed.

LiveBeta

Explore

  • Home
  • Hiring
  • Products
  • Companies
  • Discussion
  • Q&A

Resources

  • Visit Hacker News
  • HN API
  • Modal cronjobs
  • Meta Llama

Briefings

Inbox recaps on the loudest debates & under-the-radar launches.

Connect

© 2025 Not Hacker News! — independent Hacker News companion.

Not affiliated with Hacker News or Y Combinator. We simply enrich the public API with analytics.