ix In the 1930s I dared tell only my closest friends and colleagues that I believed it was possible
that a computer could defeat chess grandmasters. Outsiders would have called me a dreamer.
p.6 Not even in the heaviest of Berlin's air raids did I experience such a fear as during the daily morning
Latin class, when all feared they might be called on. [JLJ laughing -some things never change - I took 3 years of Latin in
High School.]
p.6 As a child and as a youth I was a dreamer, and at school my thoughts often wandered from the
subject at hand.
p.22 Looking back on my life, I can nevertheless only hope that in the future there will be a place
not only for the specialist in his field, but also for the talented generalist. I believe that it is precisely this well-roundedness
that is the prerequisite for ideas outside the norm. In the final analysis, the computer was such an idea - if you will,
a side-step of technology.
p.34 When I began to build the computer, I neither understood anything about computing machines
nor had I ever heard of Babbage.
p.34-35 in 1935, I decided to become a computer developer. Of course, my parents were not exactly
thrilled with the idea... Later, they even let me build my first, still rather bulky machines in the largest room
of their apartment. My friends at the university also pitched in. They gave me money... Others who had nothing to give worked
alongside me in the workshop.
p.35-36 [Karl-Heinz Czauderna tells of his friendship and work with Konrad Zuse] Kuno, as I and
Konrad Zuse's other university friends called him... was planning to build a universal computing machine. He was looking for
helpers... chiefly in the summer of 1937, for months I worked all day long with Zuse... He had set up a small
workshop in a small room in his parents' apartment... for his machine... Evenings we played chess [in another room]...
We all had great faith in Zuse and his invention. Of course, we didn't know exactly how everything was supposed to
work... So, what was my job? Chiefly, I built the sheet metal relays for the first machine, which has now
gone down in history under the name "Z1." ... And yet, the machine was completed, worked with an unholy rattle and
supplied precise solutions to complicated tasks. It took up almost the entire living room. It was a permanent fixture in the
apartment. I think that it was only after the house was bombed during the war that the first Zuse Universal computing machine
could be moved into the museum.
p.37 Zuse explained that calculations are only a special case of logical operations, and that his machine
must also be able to play chess.
p.38 Work on the machines Z1 to Z3 was carried out without any formalities - that is, more
improvised than is the case in what is called a regulated working context. Nonetheless, I myself spent 80 hours a
week in my workshop. And yet there was still time for friends and fun.
p.49-50 But it was clear to me that one day there would be computing machines capable of winning
international chess matches. I estimated that it would take about fifty years before this would happen... It
should be emphasized here that this has less to do with the chess brain, i.e. the computer, than it does with the chess programs.
p.57 So, not long before I was drafted I had learned to play chess only because I considered it
a game that could be used to develop and test my computing machine calculus. As a soldier, I now always had a traveling
chess set with me. Chess allowed me to study a complex mixture of rules, different cases and suchlike, with little space and
few components... My conjecture, already voiced earlier, that one day a computing machine would be able to defeat the world
chess champion, now had to be more carefully substantiated. But there was still a long way to go.
p.213 Already when I tried to formalize the game of chess, I had to bring unordered thoughts into fixed
formulas. For the time being indeed I had to give up the dream of the victory of a machine against the world chess champion;
a rough calculation showed purely quantitatively that it was not possible to make a secure calculation of the best
move.
