A closer look
While American and British labs were pouring massive government funding into early computers, a stubborn German engineer named Konrad Zuse was casually building the world’s first fully programmable digital computer in his parents' living room. Constructed in 1941 from discarded telephone relays, the Z3 used a sophisticated binary floating-point system that was years ahead of its time. Because of WWII, the global scientific community remained completely ignorant of his monumental achievement until his living room was bombed to dust.
