First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC

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First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC

The First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC
EDVAC

EDVAC was one of the earliest electronics computers. Unlike its predecessor the ENIAC, it was binary numeral system rather than decimal, and was a Von Neumann architecture machine....
(commonly shortened to First Draft) was an incomplete

Unfinished work

An unfinished work is a creative work that has not been finished. Its creator might have chosen never to finish it, or have been prevented by circumstances outside of his or her control ....
101-page document written by John von Neumann

John von Neumann

John von Neumann was a Hungarian American mathematician who made major contributions to a vast range of fields, including set theory, functional analysis, quantum mechanics, ergodic theory, continuous geometry, economics and game theory, computer science, numerical analysis, hydrodynamics , and statistics, as well as many other mathematical...
and distributed on June 30, 1945 by Herman Goldstine, security officer on the classified ENIAC

ENIAC

ENIAC, short for Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer, was a general-purpose electronic computer. It was a Turing complete, digital computer capable of being reprogrammed to solve a full range of computing problems....
project. It contains the first published description of the logical design of a computer using the stored-program concept, which has come to be known as the von Neumann architecture

Von Neumann architecture

The von Neumann architecture is a design model for a stored-program digital computer that uses a central processing unit and a single separate computer storage structure to hold both instructions and data ....
.

History
The title page of the report reads:

Von Neumann wrote the report by hand while commuting by train to Los Alamos, New Mexico

Los Alamos, New Mexico

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Encyclopedia

Unfinished work

John von Neumann

ENIAC

Von Neumann architecture

History

The title page of the report reads:

Von Neumann wrote the report by hand while commuting by train to Los Alamos, New Mexico

Los Alamos, New Mexico

Los Alamos is a townsite and census-designated place in Los Alamos County, New Mexico, New Mexico, United States. The population of the CDP was 11,909 at the United States Census, 2000....
and mailed the handwritten notes back to Philadelphia. Goldstine had the report typed and duplicated. While the date on the typed report is June 30, 24 copies of the First Draft were distributed to persons closely connected with the EDVAC project five days earlier on June 25. Interest in the report caused it to be sent all over the world; Maurice Wilkes

Maurice Vincent Wilkes

Sir Maurice Vincent Wilkes Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering Fellow of the Royal Society is a United Kingdom computer scientist credited with several important developments in computing....
of Cambridge University cited his excitement over the report's content as the impetus for his decision to travel to the United States

United States

The United States of America is a Federal government constitutional republic comprising U.S. state and a federal district. The country is situated mostly in central North America, where its Contiguous United States and Washington, D.C., the Capital districts and territories, lie between the Pacific Ocean and Atlantic Oceans, Borders of the U...
for the Moore School Lectures

Moore School Lectures

Theory and Techniques for Design of Electronic Digital Computers was a course in the construction of electronic digital computers held at the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering between July 8,1946 and August 30,1946, and was the first time any computer topics had ever been taught to an assemblage of peopl...
in Summer 1946.

Controversy

The treatment of the preliminary report as a publication (in the legal sense) was the source of bitter acrimony between factions of the EDVAC

EDVAC

EDVAC was one of the earliest electronics computers. Unlike its predecessor the ENIAC, it was binary numeral system rather than decimal, and was a Von Neumann architecture machine....
design team for two reasons. First, publication amounted to a public disclosure that prevented the EDVAC from being patented; second, some on the EDVAC design team contended that the stored-program concept had evolved out of meetings at the University of Pennsylvania

University of Pennsylvania

The University of Pennsylvania is a private research university located in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Penn is America's first university and is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States....
's Moore School of Electrical Engineering

Moore School of Electrical Engineering

The Moore School of Electrical Engineering at the University of Pennsylvania came into existence as a result of an endowment from Alfred Fitler Moore on June 4, 1923....
predating von Neumann's activity as a consultant there, and that much of the work represented in the First Draft was no more than a translation of the discussed concepts into the language of formal logic

Logic

Logic is the study of the principles of valid demonstration and inference. Logic is a branch of philosophy, a part of the classical Trivium . The word derives from Greek language ?????? , fem....
in which von Neumann was fluent, hence, failure of von Neumann and Goldstine to list others as authors on the First Draft led credit to be attributed to von Neumann alone. (See Matthew effect

Matthew effect

The Matthew effect is the phenomenon that "the rich get richer and the poor get poorer", and can be observed in various different contexts where "rich" and "poor" can take different meanings....
.)

Bibliography

External links

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