Konrad Zuse's Z3 was built from about 2,000 telephone relays and read its program from punched film

On 12 May 1941 the German engineer Konrad Zuse presented the Z3, widely regarded as the first working program-controlled, fully automatic computing machine. It was electromechanical, built from about 2,000 telephone relays, and worked in binary floating point with a 22-bit word. Its instructions were read from a punched film tape, so changing the calculation meant feeding in a different tape rather than rewiring the machine. The original was destroyed in an Allied air raid on Berlin in 1945.

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Last verified June 6, 2026