How the Z1 (Aka the Zuse one) computer worked? (Mainly mechnically)

Question

I’m mostly talking about the mechanical sense. I know it relied on floating point binary, (Though I admittedly have zero idea what that means) but I mean in terms of its parts. How did a machine that was exclusively mechanical produce arithmatic?

In: 0

Answer 1

You have metal parts that you can control how they interact by moving them.

Mechanical safety on a gun can be considered a logical gate. You can make them so the trigger can be pressed regardless of the position on the safety but it is only when the safety is off pushing the trigger result in the fire pit being pushed into the cartridge. This is a gate both the safety and the trigger have to be in the correct position to fire the gun.

There is a 3d mechanical simulator of a four-bit adder that Z1 used at http://zuse-z1.zib.de/simulations/z1/adders/wgl/

http://zuse.zib.de/