Computing; Neumann Machine

choi

The history of computing | Creation Story; Computing’s long and twisted past. Economist, Mar 10, 2012.
http://www.economist.com/node/21549914
(book review on George Dyson, Turing’s Cathedral; The origins of the digital universe. Pantheon (in US) or Allen Lane (in UK), 2012)

Quote: "Yet despite establishing the blueprint for all subsequent computers, which are known to this day as Neumann machines, the IAS machine is less well known, even among computer-history buffs, than ENIAC or Colossus.

Note:
(a) Alan Turing
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Turing
(1912-1954; committed suicide with cyanide; English)
(b) John von Neumann
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann
(1903-1957; born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary; Jewish; a naturalized citizen of US in 1937; Along with Edward Teller [from Budapest also] and Stanisław Ulam [a Polish Jew, born in now Ukraine], von Neumann worked out key steps in the nuclear physics involved in thermonuclear reactions and the hydrogen bomb; died of "either bone or pancreatic cancer")
(c) ENIAC
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC
(Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer; (designed to calculate artillery firing tables for the United States Army's Ballistic Research Laboratory; financed by the United States Army; financed by the United States Army; financed by the United States Army; work on the computer in secret by the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Electrical Engineering, 1943-1946; by a team led by by John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert, which included Jeffrey Chuan Chu)

(d) Institute for Advanced Study
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Advanced_Study
(founded in 1930 by Abraham Flexner; independent)

Quote: "There are no degree programs or experimental facilities at the Institute, and research is funded by endowments, grants and gifts — it does not support itself with tuition or fees. Research is never contracted or directed; it is left to each individual researcher to pursue his or her own goals. It is not part of any educational institution; however, the proximity of Princeton University (less than two miles (3 km) from its science departments to the Institute complex) means that informal ties are close

(e) Freeman Dyson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson
(1923- ; a British-born American theoretical physicist and mathematician)

The English surname Dyson means a dyer, from dye.
(f)
(i) The thermionic" in "thermionic valves" is
(adj; thermion[:] charged particle from an incandescent source, from therm- + ion; First Known Use 1909):
"relating to, using, or being the emission of charged particles (as electrons) by an incandescent material"
www.m-w.com
(ii) For "thermionic valve," see vacuum tube
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vacuum_tube
(vacuum tube in US)

(g) Nils Aall Barricelli
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nils_Aall_Barricelli
(1912–1993; a Norwegian-Italian mathematician)
(h) IBM 701
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_701
(announced to the public on April 29, 1952, and was IBM’s first commercial scientific computer)