Chapter I, Part 32: An Offer for a Computer Pioneer
- Location
- Hamburg, Germany
Berlin, June 1st 1944
Professor Koch took his car to get from Dahlem to Kreuzberg. They had discussed at the institute, finally drawn straws and now it was his job to make an offer to the man his institute was named after. Koch had met the man before, when he was younger and the other man much older.
The city looked different, not a lot, but it sometimes felt almost as if two building where occupying the same space. That was physically impossible of course, but so was time travel, wasn't it?
Houses where much closer to the Autobahn as they had been days ago, he was sure about it.
He left the Autobahn at Tempelhofer Damm and gladly noticed that at least the Tempelhofer Feld had returned to being an Airport instead of being an pretty useless over-sized park. Only the old airport build looked strangely out of place.
Finding a parking space near Viktoriapark had never been so easy.
This area, as probably all urban regions looked a bit strange as the merger of the old and the new. Koch wondered if Konrad Zuse had already seen the commemorative plaque regarding his work in the UT past, the DT present.
Apparently he had. Konrad Zuse and his team where working in a half bombed out house so Koch didn't have a problem to get in. As for getting their attention he had brought his old mac-book opened it and showed some fancy graphics to the astounded men. "I am sorry, what you are doing here is or rather was groundbreaking work for the computer industry, but I am afraid it is also terrible outdated. That is not your fault, but way don't you take a day of, or you can have this computer to look at. You may keep it. Now, can I please talk to Mister Zuse?"
Konrad Zuse stepped forward: "And who are you exactly?"
Professor Koch handed over his card, Zuse took it, looked at it, looked back at the professor and back at the card.
"Yes, it I true, I am from the future and so is the Zuse Institute Berlin, yes we named it after you, and back then you were quite pleased about it. Can I have a couple of hours of your time? I can answer your questions, except how and why this all happened, because nobody knows. But first I would like to show you something. My car is parked outside if you are ready."
Zuse just nodded and followed Koch to his car.
They didn't go far. With Zuse next to him Koch thought about the fact that his car had million times as much as computing capability than Zuses Z3, the computer that had gotten destroyed by a bombing raid in 1943.
Koch parked in front of the German Technical Museum, paid for both of them and Zuse who still hadn't said a word into the the entrance hall.
Koch wondered for a moment, if some other part of the museum had turned back to being an actual rail yard, but than he had to keep Zuse from being distracted. There was a lot to see after all.
"Mister Zuse, I just had to show you this, it is a museum from my time, 2013, and it has a section about your work." They went upstairs.
What Koch hadn't thought of, was the fact that there was a picture of the old Zuse, next to the rebuild Z1 together with a short biography.
Both man walked through the exhibition for maybe half an hour in silence, than the downtimer spoke: "Another 50 years, not too bad. But apparently all I wanted to build and a lot more is already possible, what do you want from me?"
That was getting right to the point, why not, Koch tried to explain: " We need to build a computer industry, while we got the knowledge, we hardly have production capacity, because most computer where actually designed in the USA and assembled in factories the far East. And we just don't have enough skilled people in Germany. So we need to get downtime people skilled as fast as possible, and want to work with you to set up training programs."
Zuse reply was fast: "You have an institute barring my name; so how could I say no?"
Professor Koch took his car to get from Dahlem to Kreuzberg. They had discussed at the institute, finally drawn straws and now it was his job to make an offer to the man his institute was named after. Koch had met the man before, when he was younger and the other man much older.
The city looked different, not a lot, but it sometimes felt almost as if two building where occupying the same space. That was physically impossible of course, but so was time travel, wasn't it?
Houses where much closer to the Autobahn as they had been days ago, he was sure about it.
He left the Autobahn at Tempelhofer Damm and gladly noticed that at least the Tempelhofer Feld had returned to being an Airport instead of being an pretty useless over-sized park. Only the old airport build looked strangely out of place.
Finding a parking space near Viktoriapark had never been so easy.
This area, as probably all urban regions looked a bit strange as the merger of the old and the new. Koch wondered if Konrad Zuse had already seen the commemorative plaque regarding his work in the UT past, the DT present.
Apparently he had. Konrad Zuse and his team where working in a half bombed out house so Koch didn't have a problem to get in. As for getting their attention he had brought his old mac-book opened it and showed some fancy graphics to the astounded men. "I am sorry, what you are doing here is or rather was groundbreaking work for the computer industry, but I am afraid it is also terrible outdated. That is not your fault, but way don't you take a day of, or you can have this computer to look at. You may keep it. Now, can I please talk to Mister Zuse?"
Konrad Zuse stepped forward: "And who are you exactly?"
Professor Koch handed over his card, Zuse took it, looked at it, looked back at the professor and back at the card.
"Yes, it I true, I am from the future and so is the Zuse Institute Berlin, yes we named it after you, and back then you were quite pleased about it. Can I have a couple of hours of your time? I can answer your questions, except how and why this all happened, because nobody knows. But first I would like to show you something. My car is parked outside if you are ready."
Zuse just nodded and followed Koch to his car.
They didn't go far. With Zuse next to him Koch thought about the fact that his car had million times as much as computing capability than Zuses Z3, the computer that had gotten destroyed by a bombing raid in 1943.
Koch parked in front of the German Technical Museum, paid for both of them and Zuse who still hadn't said a word into the the entrance hall.
Koch wondered for a moment, if some other part of the museum had turned back to being an actual rail yard, but than he had to keep Zuse from being distracted. There was a lot to see after all.
"Mister Zuse, I just had to show you this, it is a museum from my time, 2013, and it has a section about your work." They went upstairs.
What Koch hadn't thought of, was the fact that there was a picture of the old Zuse, next to the rebuild Z1 together with a short biography.
Both man walked through the exhibition for maybe half an hour in silence, than the downtimer spoke: "Another 50 years, not too bad. But apparently all I wanted to build and a lot more is already possible, what do you want from me?"
That was getting right to the point, why not, Koch tried to explain: " We need to build a computer industry, while we got the knowledge, we hardly have production capacity, because most computer where actually designed in the USA and assembled in factories the far East. And we just don't have enough skilled people in Germany. So we need to get downtime people skilled as fast as possible, and want to work with you to set up training programs."
Zuse reply was fast: "You have an institute barring my name; so how could I say no?"