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Küntzel discovers a similar goal in the German philosopher Leibniz (1646 - 1716). He too, in civil war-torn 17th-century Europe, wanted to design a universal language, which would facilitate communication via a network of universities. Leibniz's cylindrical computer, never built, signified an important step forward from dead mechanical calculations to a flexible 'Ars Combinatoria', which would differentiate between the feeding in of data and the calculation itself, according to Küntzel. Leibniz also philosophized about a computer based on a binary numerical system. In 1679 he wrote, ''Despite its length, the binary system, in other words counting with 0 and 1, is scientifically the most fundamental system, and leads to new discoveries. When numbers are reduced to 0 and 1, a beautiful order prevails everywhere.
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