Happy Birthday, Von Neumann (And Linus!)

noims writes "Sunday is the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of John Von Neumann, the man with one of the strongest claims to the title of Father of Modern Computing. Although, as noted at the time by Mark Stanley of Freefall, several sources indicate that it may have been December 3rd." Update: 12/28 01:07 GMT by T : deja206 writes "Today (December 28, CET) also is Linus Torvalds' 34th birthday. Now we probably wouldn't be here talking about all this stuff if it weren't for him. Thank you for Linux, happy birthday!"

Comments

Re: Try Turing or Zuse

[gidds]

Er, yes, but remember that they (like Tommy Flowers and Charles Babbage) aren't Americans and so, for most of your readership, don't exist...

Re:Try Turing or Zuse

[LX.onesizebigger]

It appears you overlooked the modern modifier. While Pascal, Babbage, Lovelace, Atanasoff, Turing, Aiken, Eckert, and Mauchley (to drop just a few names) were all pioneers in their own right, their programs were strictly hardware-implemented. To alter the program sequence, the machine had to be modified. The von Neumann machine was the first stored-program computer to use the memory-control unit-ALU with accumulator design still used today (Wilkes created the first stored-program computer with the EDSAC three years earlier), and thus revolutionized computing, turning it into what it is today, hence father of modern computing.

Zuse's work was destroyed during the bombing of Berlin conducted by the Allies in 1944, so while certainly a pioneer, he cannot, unfortunately, be regarded in any way the father of computing as we know it today.