The machine had a large repertoire of instructions including square root, MAX, MIN and sine.

When delivered to ETH Zurich in 1950 the machine had a conditional branch facility added[8] and could print on a Mercedes typewriter.

[12] Zuse's company also cooperated with Alwin Walther's Institute for Applied Mathematics at the Technische Universität Darmstadt.

[11][14] The Z4 was completed in Göttingen in a facility of the Aerodynamische Versuchsanstalt (AVA, Aerodynamic Research Institute), which was headed by Albert Betz.

But when it was presented to scientists of the AVA the roar of the approaching front could already be heard,[2] so the computer was transported with a truck of the Wehrmacht to Hinterstein in Bad Hindelang in southern Bavaria, where Konrad Zuse met Wernher von Braun.

[10] In 1949, the Swiss mathematician Eduard Stiefel, after coming back from a stay in the US where he inspected American computers, visited Zuse and the Z4.

Stiefel decided to acquire the computer for his newly founded Institute for Applied Mathematics at the ETH Zurich.