23 Jan
2011
23 Jan
'11
6:40 a.m.
They state: "It?s true that the ABC used vacuum
tubes for counting,
but that concept was already established in other inventions such as
ray counters." The ABC did not use counters, one of it's most
significant accomplishments was that it broke from counter-based
arithmetic to do arithmetic with logic and gates.
You're right. And you're the second person to point this out to me.
"Counting" is now changed to "logic".
Are you referring to the 'stored program'
'observations'? I believe it
has been reasonably established that the stored program concept could
not be attributed to Von Neumann - that the concept either came out of
the group discussions for EDVAC and could not be attributed to
individuals, or that Eckert and Mauchly had already arrived at the
notion before Von Neumann's involvement.
Correct. Unfortunately VN got credit for it. (Explanation in my
previous reply.)