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The difference with PKE is that there was no contact between MI6 and the acked inventors. Von Neumann was aware of others' work that he could have acknowledged

by ncmncm 4y ago

The difference with PKE is that there was no contact between MI6 and the acked inventors. Von Neumann was aware of others' work that he could have acknowledged, even if not by name, but chose not to. My recollection is that the report was published in 1949, not 1945. Maybe we are thinking of two different reports?

adrian_b 4y ago
No, the John von Neumann report ("First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC") is dated 30 June 1945 and it was widely circulated during the following months in typewritten copies. Freely-downloadable copies can be easily found now by searching the Internet. This 1945 report is the one which initiated all the many research projects for building digital electronic computers during the following years, at various universities from USA and UK, and at various research institutions from USA and UK, e.g. NIST, NPL, IAS, followed then by projects at various commercial companies. Regarding credits, this draft of a report was the result of discussions over several months with the members of the ENIAC team about how the successor of ENIAC should be made. There were no British results that could have been credited in it (except very old results obtained many years before WWII; most digital electronic circuits, like flip-flops and digital counters, had been invented in UK, either by British or by people of other nationalities working in UK), so the credits could have shown only which ideas came from von Neumann himself, which ideas came from members of the ENIAC team, and which were older ideas, already popularized by people like Howard Aiken and others who had designed electro-mechanical computers. Since the draft document that went "viral" through the research community was not a final paper ready for publishing, it can hardly be criticized for lacking a bibliography and credits section. Moreover, the ENIAC team members cannot really complain about not receiving appropriate credits in the draft document, because now we know that they had actually learned useful information from John Atanasoff at the Iowa State College, but they have never credited him in any way. From both John Atanasoff (1940) and John von Neumann (1945) we have very valuable reports describing how to make a digital electronic computer, where many important ideas appear for the first time in public documents. From the members of the ENIAC team, we do not have any document of comparable quality, so their greatest merit is that they have taught John von Neumann a part of what they have learned during the ENIAC project, enabling the latter to write a synthesis good enough to enable any competent electronics engineer to start designing a digital electronic computer. Besides explaining whatever he had learned from the ENIAC team, John von Neumann discussed in his report various possible improvements, like having a random-access memory instead of a sequential-access memory.

by ncmncm 4y ago

adrian_b 4y ago

No, the John von Neumann report ("First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC") is dated 30 June 1945 and it was widely circulated during the following months in typewritten copies. Freely-downloadable copies can be easily found now by searching the Internet. This 1945 report is the one which initiated all the many research projects for building digital electronic computers during the following years, at various universities from USA and UK, and at various research institutions from USA and UK, e.g. NIST, NPL, IAS, followed then by projects at various commercial companies. Regarding credits, this draft of a report was the result of discussions over several months with the members of the ENIAC team about how the successor of ENIAC should be made. There were no British results that could have been credited in it (except very old results obtained many years before WWII; most digital electronic circuits, like flip-flops and digital counters, had been invented in UK, either by British or by people of other nationalities working in UK), so the credits could have shown only which ideas came from von Neumann himself, which ideas came from members of the ENIAC team, and which were older ideas, already popularized by people like Howard Aiken and others who had designed electro-mechanical computers. Since the draft document that went "viral" through the research community was not a final paper ready for publishing, it can hardly be criticized for lacking a bibliography and credits section. Moreover, the ENIAC team members cannot really complain about not receiving appropriate credits in the draft document, because now we know that they had actually learned useful information from John Atanasoff at the Iowa State College, but they have never credited him in any way. From both John Atanasoff (1940) and John von Neumann (1945) we have very valuable reports describing how to make a digital electronic computer, where many important ideas appear for the first time in public documents. From the members of the ENIAC team, we do not have any document of comparable quality, so their greatest merit is that they have taught John von Neumann a part of what they have learned during the ENIAC project, enabling the latter to write a synthesis good enough to enable any competent electronics engineer to start designing a digital electronic computer. Besides explaining whatever he had learned from the ENIAC team, John von Neumann discussed in his report various possible improvements, like having a random-access memory instead of a sequential-access memory.