[inforoots] first use of bits to store programmes?

[Ed Thelen]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Niels Ole Finnemann (by way of Bill Selmeier<selmeier at computerhistory.org>)" <finneman at imv.au.dk>
To: <inforoots at computerhistory.org>
Sent: Wednesday, November 22, 2006 8:32 PM
Subject: [inforoots] first use of bits to store programmes?


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> Help: I suppose there are people on this list who can help me with the
> following question:
> It's known that Konrad Zuse used binary notation for numbers in his
> calculating machines, that von Neumann developed the idea of a stored
> program,


... "that von Neumann developed the idea of a stored
program, "


At the risk of being a purest, maybe the phrase should be reworded
     "that von Neumann was first to publish the idea of a stored
program, ".

As I understand it - from "History of Computing Technology" by
   Michael R. Williams - second edition Page 296   The Genesis of  the Ideas

"By January of 1944, there was enough time for Mauchly and Eckert
to consider the problem of how to implement a device to store and quickly
access the sequence of instructions that might be needed in any future
electronic computing machines.  Eckert wrote a three-page document describing
a <I>magnetic calculating machine</I> in which the instructions could
either be stored magnetically on special alloy disks, when the program would only
be needed temporarily, or etched permanently on disks when the program
was to be kept available for repeated use.  Thus the initial concept of a stored
program computer appears to have had its tentative beginnings in late 1943
or early 1944."

During the summer of 1944, John von Neumann visited frequently with the
ENIAC staff, including
   John Mauchly and J. Presper Eckert
about improvements for computing machines.

...
"it was von Neumann's genius for organizing
material and his penchant for producing reports which led him to write
down the results of all these design meetings in a document which he called
<I>First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC</I> in June of 1945.  It was this document
which first described, in detail, the concept of the stored program digital
computer."


http://www.virtualtravelog.net/entries/2003-08-TheFirstDraft.pdf

..."as mentioned earlier, he [John von Neumann]
never claimed to have invented the concepts, only wrote them down.
Needless to say, several other members of the Moore School staff were
annoyed to fine little or no mention of their names associated with their
contributions in this document, and this has led to some of the hostile battles"...

-----------------------

Everything serious I have ever read is similar to the above,
 that  "that von Neumann was first to *publish* the idea of a stored
program".  A reason might be that ENIAC was a classified military
tool, and derivatives of such would likely be classified also.
But the war was soon over (thanks to the atomic bomb in August 1945)
and ENIAC and other computing tools were soon declassified -

Ed Thelen  ed at ed-thelen.org