Z5 (computer)

The machine was purchased to support the design and optimisation of optical lens systems, a computationally intensive task that had previously required large teams of human computers. Konrad Zuse began building automatic calculating machines in 1936, working initially in his parents' apartment in Berlin. His Z3 (1941), constructed from 2,600 telephone relays, is recognised as the world's first programmable, fully automatic digital computer; it was destroyed in an Allied bombing raid in 1944. The Z4, completed in 1945, survived the war after Zuse transported it by horse-drawn cart to Hinterstein in Bavaria to avoid the fighting. Leased to the ETH Zürich in 1950, the Z4 became the first computer to be commercially operated in continental Europe . Zuse founded his own company, Zuse KG, in Bad Hersfeld in 1949 to manufacture and sell computers commercially. The Z5 was the company's first machine built to a specific customer's order rather than as a general-purpose product for sale. Ernst Leitz GmbH, based in Wetzlar and internationally known as the manufacturer of Leica cameras and precision optical instruments, including microscopes and binoculars, needed a machine capable of solving the complex systems of equations involved in tracing light rays through multi-element lens assemblies — calculations that governed the aberration characteristics and performance of new lens designs .