In the 1930s, Konrad Zuse, a German scientist, invented the first functional computing device, an electromechanical beast that used relays as logic gates. In this interview from The Machine That Changed the World, a 1992 documentary digitized and posted by Upcoming founder Andy Baio at Waxy.org, Zuse spoke about his role in history.

"You could say I was too lazy to calculate, so I invented the computer." The whole documentary is a lot of fun to watch — famed British thespian David Jacobi even makes an appearance in a dramatization as the legendary Alan Turing. Zuse and Turing were on opposite sides of World War II, with Zuse's machine mostly used to crunch numbers for the Nazis' rocket projects. Helping to keep track of the undesirables intended for slaughter in the concentration camps? That was IBM's job.