History of Computers: John von Neumann was born in Budapest on December 28th, 1903. He was a brilliant mathematician who established Game Theory, proved the Minimax theorem, and built the foundations of quantum mechanics.

In 1921, Neumann won a prize as the best mathematics student in Hungary. From 1921 onwards he studied mathematics and physics alongside two universities - Budapest and Berlin. In 1925 he received his degree in Chemical Engineering, and his doctorate summa cum laude in Mathematics. He was 22 years old.

In 1930, Neumann was invited to Princeton University in the United States to be a guest professor. A year later, he settled down in Princeton. No more would he move around in the circles of Europe, from now on his future lay in Princeton New Jersey, Los Alamos New Mexico, and Washington D.C.

During the World War II he worked at Los Alamos on the development of nuclear weapons and energy, as well as on the first computer.

After the war, Neumann dedicated himself to building better and better computers. In June of 1945, he drafted a report describing a computer that would eventually be built as the EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer). This was the first description of the design of a stored-program computer, and gives rise to the term von Neumann computer.

The EDVAC was constructed at the Moore School of Electrical Engineering and delivered to the BRL Computing Laboratory at Aberdeen Proving Ground in August 1949 for installation. Initially there were very few logical errors, which were solved in eighteen months and the machine started to operate on a limited basis late in 1951. By early 1952 it was averaging 15-20 hours of useful time per week for solving mathematical problems. By 1961 the EDVAC was operating 145 hours out of a 168-hour week.

EDVAC was the first internally stored program computer to be built. The EDVAC was organized as follows:

Control. This unit contained all operating buttons, indicating lamps, control switches, and an oscilloscope for aid in maintenance.
Dispatcher. This unit decoded orders received from the control and memory.
High-Speed Memory. This consisted of two identical units, each containing 64 acoustic delay lines.
Computer. This unit performed the rational operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division). Any disagreement stopped the machine and gave an abnormal halt indication.
Timer. This unit emitted the clock pulses at intervals of 1 microsecond, and timing pulses at intervals of 48 microseconds.

After ten years of operation the EDVAC was still in use because of its great reliability and productivity, its low operating cost, its high operating efficiency and its speed and flexibility in solving certain types of problems.