born June 22, 1910, Berlin, Ger.
died Dec. 18, 1995, Hünfeld
German engineer.
In 1941 he constructed the first fully operational program-controlled electromechanical binary calculating machine, or digital computer , called the Z3. The machine predated Howard H. Aiken 's Harvard Mark I but was destroyed by bombing during World War II. In 1945 he designed Plankalkül, one of the first attempts at a high-level programming language , which later influenced the development of ALGOL .