EDVAC and the First Draft
EDVAC and the First Draft
This chapter charts the rapid evolution of thinking about programming and computer architecture among members of the ENIAC team from 1944 onward, as what is usually called the “stored program concept” was formulated with John von Neumann and presented in the “First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC.” Use of archival sources makes this more specific and rigorous in documenting this process than any previous published account, presenting the new approach as an evolution of, and response to, the original ENIAC programming method. The ideas present in the “First Draft” are clearly explained and separated into three distinct clusters: the “EDVAC hardware paradigm,” the “von Neumann architecture paradigm,” and the “modern code paradigm.” The chapter finishes with an exploration of initial understanding and reception of these ideas, reconstructing the late-1940s consensus on what was important about the new approach and why.
Keywords: Von Neumann, John, Von Neumann architecture, EDVAC, Computer architecture
MIT Press Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs, and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us.