Konrad Zuse is one of the great pioneers of the computerage. He created thefirst fully automated, programcontrolled, freely programmable computer using binaryfloating-point calculation. It was operational in 1941. Hebuilt his first machines in Berlin during the Second WorldWar, with bombs falling all around, and after the war hebuilt up a company that was taken over by Siemens in 1967. Zuse was an inventor in the traditional style, full ofphantastic ideas, but also gifted with a powerful analyticalmind. Single-handedly, he developed one of the firstprogramming languages, the Plan Calculus, including featurescopied only decades later in other languages. He wrotenumerousbooks and articles and won many honors and awards. This is his autobiography, written in an engagingly livelyand pleasant style, full of anecdotes, reminiscences, andphilosophical asides. It traces his life from his childhoodin East Prussia, through tense wartime experiences and hardtimes building up his business after the war, to a ripe oldage andwell-earned celebrity.