3 ms·

> Imagine, when Pres and John applied for an EDVAC patent, they found that ambitious duo of Johnny and Herman had already applied. When confronted with this dup

> Imagine, when Pres and John applied for an EDVAC patent, they found that ambitious duo of Johnny and Herman had already applied. When confronted with this duplicity, von Neumann said he did it to ensure that the EDVAC patent would be in the public domain and not be used for commercial purposes. You bet. This was good for the development of computers, that there was no initial patent thicket/fight. See early aviation history for a contrast. I'd doubt too that von Neumann was burning to steal credit for the stored-program concept. He'd already gained a world-class reputation by his earlier work, and I haven't heard of anything else similar from him. (BTW I did read on /r/math the other day someone saying that an early paper from von Neumann got held up by Birkhoff as editor of the journal, iirc, who proceeded to publish a stronger result first using vN's idea. So it's not like you never hear about unscrupulous conduct from mathematicians.)

kens 2y ago
> This was good for the development of computers, that there was no initial patent thicket/fight. For context, the ENIAC patent [1] was filed in 1947, leading to the six-year Honeywell v. Sperry Rand patent fight [2], ending in the invalidation of the ENIAC patent. [1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US3120606 https://patents.google.com/patent/US3120606 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell,_Inc._v._Sperry_Rand_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell,_Inc._v._Sperry_Rand.... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/1973/04/13/archives/a-basic-computer-patent-at-sperry-rand-annulledd-reason-for-ruling.html https://www.nytimes.com/1973/04/13/archives/a-basic-computer...
Rochus 2y ago
> I'd doubt too that von Neumann was burning to steal credit for the stored-program concept Well, he obviously has left out the main inventors of the design as authors and didn't even mention them in the credits (nor the references), and neither he nor Goldstine had the permission to distribute/publish details of the design. Not exactly the behavior I would expect from a reputable scientist. That's like translating an Einstein paper to some other language/formalism and then just putting the name of the translator on the authors list (leaving out the actual author). There have already been students expelled from universities for minor offenses.

kens 2y ago

> This was good for the development of computers, that there was no initial patent thicket/fight. For context, the ENIAC patent [1] was filed in 1947, leading to the six-year Honeywell v. Sperry Rand patent fight [2], ending in the invalidation of the ENIAC patent. [1] https://patents.google.com/patent/US3120606 https://patents.google.com/patent/US3120606 [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell,_Inc._v._Sperry_Rand_Corp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeywell,_Inc._v._Sperry_Rand.... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/1973/04/13/archives/a-basic-computer-patent-at-sperry-rand-annulledd-reason-for-ruling.html https://www.nytimes.com/1973/04/13/archives/a-basic-computer...

Rochus 2y ago

> I'd doubt too that von Neumann was burning to steal credit for the stored-program concept Well, he obviously has left out the main inventors of the design as authors and didn't even mention them in the credits (nor the references), and neither he nor Goldstine had the permission to distribute/publish details of the design. Not exactly the behavior I would expect from a reputable scientist. That's like translating an Einstein paper to some other language/formalism and then just putting the name of the translator on the authors list (leaving out the actual author). There have already been students expelled from universities for minor offenses.