Konrad Zuse is one of the great pioneers of the computer age. He created the first stored-program computer in 1941 and continued to build machines for a quarter-century, as well as writing books and articles. This is his autobiography - lively, witty, full of fascinating asides.

1 Ancestors and parents - Early childhood memories - School days - Metropolis - Abitur.- 2 Studies (not without detours and by-ways) and general studies - First inventions - The Akademischer Verein Motiv - Student life between science and politics.- 3 The early years of the computer (and a digression on its prehistory) - Colleagues remember - From mechanics to electromechanics - Schreyer's electronic computing machine - First outside contacts - Thoughts on the future.- 4 Outbreak of the war and (first) call-up - Structural engineer in aircraft construction - The Z2 and Z3 - Second call-up - Zuse Ingenieurbüro und Apparatebau, Berlin - The first process computer.- 5 Origins of the Z4 - News from the United States - Attempt at a Ph.D. dissertation - Computing machine for logic operations - Final months of the war in Berlin - The evacuation - Z4 completed in Göttingen - Final war days in the Allgäu.- 6 End of the war - Refugees in Hinterstein - The Plankalkül - The computing universe - Automation and self-reproducing systems - A logarithmic computing machine - Computer development in Germany and the United States - Move to Hopferau near Füssen - The mill of the Patent Office.- 7 The Zuse-Ingenieurbüro, Hopferau bei Füssen - First business partners: IBM and Remington Rand - The first pipelining design - Founding of ZUSE KG in Neukirchen - The Z4 in the ETH in Zurich - The computer in Europe: taking stock - Lost opportunities - The first German contract: the Z5.- 8 The partners leave - Computing machine for land use zoning - Electronics gains acceptance - First funds from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft - Losing one's way (and possibly a lost opportunity) - The arrayprocessor - Custom work for geodesists - The Graphomat Z64 - Growth and crisis of ZUSE KG - The end.- 9 Free for science (again) - Honors - A look to the future.- Appendices.- 1. From Forms to Program Control.- 2. Construction of Devices.- 3. On Computer Architecture.- 4. On the Plan Calculus.- 5. Lecture on the Occasion of the Award of the Honorary Doctorate by the Technical University of Berlin (Extract).- 6. The Computer Did Not Fall from Heaven.- Notes.- References.- Name Index.- Computer Index.