Talk:IAS machine

message: IAS machine words could store numbers as well.--Cmd353 18:30, 29 December 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: as well as what? Perhaps the confusion is that the numbers it stored could be interprested as either data or instructions? W Nowicki (talk) 22:13, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Early comment

message: Why BESM is mentioned here? Any sources to prove it was an IAS machine? -komap (talk) 10:51, 30 January 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: The IAS history page seems to be the source. Obviously a citation addition opportunity. W Nowicki (talk) 22:13, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  IAS architecture computers 

message: :The computer was built from 1942 until 1951...
Alas, one Smithsonian page http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object.cfm?key=35&objkey=31 says this, but seems incorrect. Most other sources, including the other Smithsonian page and the IAS page, make it clear von Neuman worked at other places during the war and did not start the IAS machine until later, about 1945 or 46. It was probably confusing this with the ENIAC? W Nowicki (talk) 22:56, 26 May 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dubious 

message: George Dyson's book "Turing's Cathedral" has been reviewd in the UK Sunday paper The Observer by John Naughton on 26 Feb 2012.  This affects this article.  It now seems essential to be able to show sources predating late 1945.
Waffent (talk) 00:35, 27 February 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  George Dyson, Turing's Cathedral 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: DIGITAL COMPUTER NEWSLETTER. VOLUME 5, NUMBER 2: "[...] large number of meteorological forecasts, several hydrodynamical calculations, a number of astrophysical calculations, some work on the determination of quantum-mechanical wave functions, a mathematical application of biology, and some determinations of the eigenvalues and associated functions of symmetric matrices."
DIGITAL COMPUTER NEWSLETTER. VOLUME 5, NUMBER 3: "[...] some problems in physical chemistry, and a variety of other calculations."
--89.25.210.104 (talk) 19:06, 24 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Used for 

message: The general organization is called Von Neumann architecture, even though it was both conceived and implemented by others.
I've been reading Turing's Cathedral by George Dyson, whose account is certainly authoritative on this matter, as far as it goes.  
At the very least, von Neumann contributed an early and thorough grasp of Turing's foundational paper, and it seems that he maintained a steady hand on the vision for the machine as a whole, as well as making vital contributions to the ongoing bull sessions concerning just about every key design element. He also showed up every day to interrogate and lucidly debug the debuggers (who almost invariably found their focus on the challenge at hand improved by this brisk interaction). 
On the other hand, von Neumann was certainly a force-of-nature gadfly around the edges (definitely not your standard oversight tooth fairy), and there's no shortage of credit to go around concerning almost every key contribution; it became quite a matter of contention later to disentangle priority on any aspect of its conception. 
The problem here, is that the collective did not operate at the stately speed of priority-centric academic collaboration. The typical time delay between bull sessions and soldering irons was measured in days, not months; often circuits were wired (at least partially) before parts arrived, so even the procurement process was frequently speculated. And I'm sure many guesses were reversed and revised as theory advanced upon practical reality's main force (last paragraph). 
This analysis of the priority situation violates the fundamental law of computer science: that design X and Y and Z in isolation, does not yield a finished complexity of X+Y+Z. Successfully interconnecting napkin(X) to napkin(Y) to napkin(Z) is the other 90%. Only that's not even the whole story, because at this point in the design and implementation of computers, transmission line artifacts, induced electromagnetic interference, and (crappy) statistical tube behaviour envelopes were not yet codified for (nearly) flawless digital operation. 
I came away from Dyson's book with the impression that we now know this as the von Neumann architecture because von Neumann had the deepest and clearest understanding of Turing's seminal paper, and that for this reason, he was a steady hand in steering the many bull sessions to a minimal generality (expedience often generates ill-conceived design carbuncles you regret later). So they were also battling the as-yet unnamed second law of computer science: legacy happens. 
It's completely ridiculous to argue priority here by who achieved a tidy napkin drawing first, that being perhaps 1/3 of what was actually at stake here, in raw daring and innovation. 
Probably as important as the architecture itself, the main concern was to implement the machine such that it didn't choke to death on its own electrical noise—almost certainly the second driving principle behind maintaining a posture of architectural minimalism at all cost (beyond Turing's theoretical work). Otherwise noise(X) + noise(Y) + noise(Z) could have easily achieved critical mass, and the whole thing might have wound up in the same mass grave as Babbage's irregular tooth friction. 
If this picture isn't grasped in full, this article can only end up two letters short of a VWXYZ. And that's why von Neumann was so critical and charismatic to this venture: man universally recognized by his peers as least likely to end up two letters short of VWXYZ in the first half of the 20th century. Even Turing said, of the various American efforts, "only the IAS group has a real clue", which also reflected upon their outward communication, largely on the back of the gadfly express. 
Third law of computer science: the team with the clearest priority chain will always finish second. — MaxEnt 15:56, 28 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dubious priority dissection 

message: Circle Computer
THE CIRCLE COMPUTER
CIRCLE
Circle Computer: A General-purpose Digital Computer for Science & Engineering
Circle Computer: The low-cost general-purpose computer for science and industry
DIGITAL COMPUTER NEWSLETTER. VOLUME 6, NUMBER 1, Jan 1954
DIGITAL COMPUTER NEWSLETTER. VOLUME 6, NUMBER 3
--89.25.210.104 (talk) 01:49, 30 May 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  IAS derivative(?) - Circle Computer