https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Draft_of_a_Report_on_the_EDVAC
QT:{{”
Von Neumann describes a detailed design of a “very high speed automatic digital computing system.” He divides it into six major subdivisions: a central arithmetic part, CA, a central control part, CC, memory, M, input, I, output, O, and (slow) external memory, R, such as punched cards, Teletype tape, or magnetic wire or steel tape. The CA will perform addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and square root. …Von Neumann’s design is built up using what he call “E elements,” which are based on the biological neuron as model,[1][2] but are digital devices which he says can be constructed using one or two vacuum tubes. In modern terms his simplest E element is a two-input AND gate with one input inverted (the inhibit input). …The treatment of the preliminary report as a publication (in the legal sense) was the source of bitter acrimony between factions of the EDVAC design team for two reasons.[3] First, publication amounted to a public disclosure that prevented the EDVAC from being patented; second, some on the EDVAC design team contended that the
stored-program concept had evolved out of meetings at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School of Electrical Engineering predating von Neumann’s activity as a consultant there, and that much of the work represented in the First Draft was no more than a translation of the discussed concepts into the language of formal logic in which von Neumann was fluent. Hence, failure of von Neumann and Goldstine to list others as authors on the First Draft led credit to be attributed to von Neumann alone. (See Matthew effect and Stigler’s law.) “}}
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