Trained as a civil engineer he spent the war years in Berlin working for an aviation firm and developing his theories of computing. His basic hypothesis was that "data processing starts with the bit" and he defined computing as "the formation of new data from input according to a given set of rules."

After the Z1 was destroyed, Zuse continued developing digital computers such as the Z3 and the Z4 which was taken out of Germany and brought to Switzerland as the war ended. The Z4 was used in a Swiss technical institute until 1955.

When the war ended, Zuse set up a computer manufacturing company that at one point employed over 1,000 people. Eventually, Zuse sold the company to the German firm Siemens.

Konrad Zuse died last December in Germany.

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