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Zuse Circuit Boards

YEAR: 1961
ITEM: Computer Card/Part
COMPANY: Zuse KG
COUNTRY: Germany
IN OUR COLLECTION: Yes

These 11 hand-soldered circuit boards are from either the Zuse 23 computer (1961-1967) or both. (It is possible that some of them are from an earlier model, the Zuse 22 computer, manufactured between 1955 to 1961.) The company produced 55 (some sources say 56) Z22 computers and followed that up with a successful model Z23 computer of which 98 were made. The Zuse KG company suffered financial setbacks starting in 1961 and by 1964 was bought by Rheinstahl, then BBC and in 1967 it was bought by Siemens.

Konrad Zuse is generally credited with creating the first programmable computer, the Z1, in the mid-1930s. The Z1, Z2 and Z3 were destroyed during the Allied bombing of Berlin in December 1943.

The boards in our collection are from one of the engineers who worked for Zuse KG in the 1950s and/or 1960s. They are:

  • T01
  • T07
  • T10
  • T14
  • T46
  • T48
  • Ts220T
  • Ts633
  • Ts643c
  • Ts660 (00 55 1 F)
  • Ts660 (cracked)
The two Ts660 boards seem to be made of somewhat different materials or coatings. One of the boards has two cracks which are very visible from the back.

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Documents

Documents for this item have not yet been scanned or not yet posted. There are a lot of pages...contact us if you have an immediate need. (Although there are not a lot of "immediate needs" for a 70+ year old computer!)

Exceedingly Rare

This is a guess...we haven't found any references to individual cards from the Z23 computer.

However, only 98 of these computers were made so it is likely that items from the Z23 are exceedingly rare.

We know of two Z23 restored computers that still exist. One is in the Stadt-und Kreisgeschichtlichen Museum in Hünfeld, Germany. The second was restored by the Konrad Zuse Schule (Konrad Zuse School, which is a vocational school) in Hünfeld, Germany and was delivered to the Computer History Museum (CHM) in Mountain View, California. However, we could not find any pics of the computer on the CHM website.

There is a report of a third machine at the Fraunhofer Institute for Experimental Software Engineering in Kaiserslautern, Germany.



OUR DEFINITIONS OF RARITY

One of a Kind: Only known existing item.
Exceedingly Rare: Only 2 to 10 known to exist.
Very Rare: Only 11 to 25 are known to exist.
Rare: Only 26 to 50 are known to exist.
Difficult: Difficult to find.
Available:Can be commonly be purchased.
Unknown: We cannot make a determination.

(For comparison: Many people consider the Apple-1 computer to be rare. As of 2025 there are 92 confirmed and probable Apple-1 computers.)

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