The Stored-Program Computer Debate: von Neumann vs. Eckert and Mauchly
A Teaching Text with Exercises on Early Computer Architecture

About this book:

Who really invented the architecture that powers every modern device? The *First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC* bore only John von Neumann’s name, yet it crystallized years of breakthrough engineering by J. Presper Eckert and John Mauchly at the Moore School. *The Stored-Program Computer Debate* cuts through decades of mythology to reconstruct the explosive collision of mathematical theory and wartime engineering that birthed the digital age. From the mechanical gears of Babbage and the relay logic of Zuse to the mercury delay lines that made high-speed memory possible, this book traces the technical lineage that made the stored-program concept inevitable—and the human conflict that made its attribution controversial.

Designed as a rigorous teaching text, this volume moves beyond passive narrative to put the evidence in your hands. You will dissect the logical schemata of the *First Draft*, compare the architectural realities of the EDVAC and IAS machines, and analyze the courtroom transcripts of *Honeywell v. Sperry Rand* where history was litigated under oath. Structured exercises guide you through primary source memos, patent filings, and the shifting historiography of the 1950s to the present, equipping you to evaluate the roles of von Neumann’s synthesis, Eckert’s hardware genius, and Mauchly’s systems vision on their own merits.

Whether you are a computer scientist seeking the structural roots of your discipline, a historian of technology navigating the sociology of credit, or a student learning to read technical history critically, this book offers the definitive framework for understanding computing’s most consequential priority dispute. It reveals how the unification of data and instruction in a single address space was not a single "eureka" moment, but a hard-won convergence of physics, logic, and institutional power. Engage with the blueprints, the testimony, and the arguments—and decide for yourself how the modern world was architected.