Von Neumann's Universe: Digital Computing at the Institute for Advanced Study, 1945-1958

The digital universe consists of two kinds of bits: differences in space and differences in time. Digital computers translate between these two forms of information—structure and sequence—according to definite rules. Exactly 60 years ago, John von Neumann and a small group of nonconformists launched a project to do this at electronic speed. The resulting architecture and coding has descended directly to almost all computers now in use.

Von Neumann succeeded in jump-starting the computer revolution by bringing engineers into the den of the mathematicians, rather than by bringing mathematicians into a den of engineers. The stored-program computer, as delivered by von Neumann, broke the distinction between numbers that mean things and numbers that do things. Our universe would never be the same.

With a bare 5 kilobytes of high-speed storage, von Neumann and his colleagues tackled previously intractable problems ranging from thermonuclear explosions, stellar evolution, and long-range weather forecasting to cellular automata, genetic coding, and the origins of life. Programs were small enough to be completely debugged, but hardware could not be counted on to perform consistently from one kilocycle to the next. Although this situation is now reversed, many of the lessons learned on the von Neumann project remain directly applicable today.

George Dyson is a historian of technology whose interests have ranged from the development (and redevelopment) of the Aleut kayak (Baidarka, 1986) to the evolution of digital computing and telecommunications (Darwin Among the Machines, 1997) and nuclear bomb-propelled space exploration (Project Orion, 2002). Dyson, who lives in Bellingham, Washington, divides his time between building boats and writing books. He is currently compiling an account of the confluence of people, technology, and ideas surrounding John von Neumann's Electronic Computer Project at the Institute for Advanced Study, 1945–1958.