This Genius Was The First Computer Programmer & Arguably Its Greatest
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 16 ก.ย. 2013
- I was a young filmmaker doing editing & assistant camera on this incredible film. Why do I say incredible? Because it is recording a moment in time when the people who appear in it had a sense of what computers would do. I posted the full documentary because many of my subscribers have asked me to do so. Please allow the ads to run if you can tolerate them.
This is a clip that was taken from the film which was made in 1966 with a grant from the Mathematics Association of America. John von Neumann was the greatest mathematician of the 20th century. He contributed so much to physics, mathematics, chemistry, geometry and the evolution of the computer. His work included including the creation of Game Theory, Quantum Mechanics, the development of nuclear power and the very earliest computer programming and robotics.
The documentary presents lengthy dialogues with the 20th century's leading scientists including Edward Teller, Hans Bethe, Eugene Wigner, Paul Halmos, Herman Goldstine and Oskar Morgenstern. Unfortunately Robert Oppenheimer was not available to be interviewed.
Von Neumann's work on the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics is considered a monumental achievement. And his work on the development of modern computer architecture, known as the von Neumann architecture and the stored-program concept has had a lasting impact on computer science and technology.
Von Neumann was a Hungarian-American. He immigrated to the United States in the 1930s. He is famous for several key achievements including:
Game theory: He co-authored a book titled "Theory of Games and Economic Behavior" (1944) that laid the foundation for modern game theory. The book applied mathematical principles to understand competitive situations and decision-making in economics, politics, and other fields.
Quantum mechanics: Von Neumann made important contributions to the mathematical foundations of quantum mechanics, particularly through his work on the rigorous formulation of quantum mechanics using linear operators and Hilbert spaces.
Computer science and architecture: Von Neumann played a crucial role in the development of computer science, especially through his work on the EDVAC (Electronic Discrete Variable Automatic Computer) project. While working on the EDVAC project, he introduced the concept of a stored-program computer, where both data and instructions are stored in memory. This idea was a departure from the earlier designs where computers were programmed using hardware settings or physical wiring.
Von Neumann's stored-program concept led to the development of high-level programming languages and software as we know them today. The idea enabled computers to be more easily reprogrammed for various tasks and allowed programmers to write code in a more human-readable format, which would then be translated into machine code that the computer could understand.
Although von Neumann did not directly create any specific programming languages, his ideas on computer architecture and the stored-program concept laid the foundation for the subsequent development of programming languages and software. His influence is still felt in computer science and programming today.
As I was crafting this description, I thought of my colleagues who work today in Cloud-based software architecture That refers to the design and organization of software systems that operate in a cloud computing environment. I asked one of them to tell me in relatively simple terms what that is and what it does. He wrote:
In a cloud-based architecture, resources can be easily scaled up or down as required. This is especially important for handling varying loads of user requests.
Cloud-based architectures are designed to be resilient to hardware/software failures and to continue to provide services even when certain components fail. Cloud-based architectures often involve a distributed system where various components of the software are located on different servers or even in different geographic locations.
Many cloud architectures use a microservices approach, where the application is divided into smaller, independent services that communicate with each other.
Cloud-based architectures involve large amounts of data, which need to be stored and managed effectively. This can involve databases, data warehouses and other data storage solutions.
Given that data is being stored and transferred over the internet, cloud-based architectures need to prioritize security to protect sensitive information.
I would like to thank some of the sponsors who place ads on this video. Cloud-based software architecture. Cloud server architecture. Computer network architecture courses. Mathematics. Computer science. ASU online computer science. Online computer science bachelors degree. Computer science degree online. Associates in computer technology. Cyberlink history. Oppenheimer movie.
David Hoffman filmmaker - ภาพยนตร์และแอนิเมชัน
The complete documentary is here. Worth watching - th-cam.com/video/q5SkVmZhnBw/w-d-xo.html
Von Neumann's research is still applicable and studied today. It's amazing of how revolutionary his work was.
He was the smartest person ever lived. The wiki article about him is mind boggling. He was a true polymath.
Even in 2021 I still teach students about Von Neumann architecture. The man absolutely changed the world.
That you completed a documentary on von Neumann is just astounding. I can imagine any similar journalistic interest today.
Von Neumann is such a blessing to us till this day. I am thankful even as I marvel at the extents of his genius.
Thanks you.
1:36 that expression says it all
Unfortunately, the DVD is just too costly (80$). Mr. Hoffman if you kindly lower the price, many more copies will be sold like a flash, as your audience are mostly penniless student mathematicians.
The computer behind the dude at 0:43 is the UNIVAC I (Universal Automatic Computer I), which was the first commercially produced electronic digital computer (in the late 1940s, ~20 years before this documentary).
The history of the idea of the stored program that I've seen is all true but seems to omit one fundamental contribution more important than the others. That is that of Kurt Goedel's proof of his famous incompleteness theorem. Goedel's basic idea was to encode information into sequences of numbers. This work was done in the early 1930's and it is difficult to imagine that von Neumann was not familiar with it. It is the key idea behind the stored program and originated from Kurt Goedel, arguably the deepest mathematical thinker of all time.
Kurt Goedel studied at Princetown and JVN would have known him very well personally. The same can be said for Alan Turing who also completed his PHD at Princetown, a few doors down from JVN's office. Turing readily aknowledged Goedel's contribution to his own work, including the "halting problem" arising from his seminal paper "On Computable Numbers". JVN would readily acknolwedge the many contributions of the geniuses around him. But he was unique among all these: a charistmatic, a brilliant mathematician and savvy businessman. This was the set of skills that enabled the whole IAS to come into being. Who did what is really irrelevant, as this was a unique time of collaboration, centred around Princetown (and to some extent in Manchester, UK) as people deferred their various selfish motives for the war effort. It's very telling that when JVN died, prematurely, the IAS disintegrated quickly and few major advances in computing were made for 10 years.
great piece of history, thank you!
Brilliant person
Thanks
David, is it still possible to buy (or to view elsewhere) the one-hour version you refer to at the end of the video? I'd love to watch it.
Ralph. Since Amazon stopped producing DVDs, the only way to buy it is from me and I go back to the original video master to make a copy which I mostly sell to schools and libraries and collectors. If interested, contact my office at allinaday@aol.com.
David Hoffman filmmaker
Hi Mr Hoffman, The link for purchasing the DVD is broken
www.amazon.com/dp/B00F9JE3F0
Thank you Walter
Man you forgot professor Howard h Aiken
Is this film available to purchase in digital form?
www.amazon.com/dp/B00F9JE3F0
Just record it
He was not a programmer, he was a mathematician. Not the same thing. There are many areas of mathematics in which he did great research and contributions, and have nothing to do with programming. For instance, the set-theoretical definition of natural (in general, ordinal numbers) was proposed by him.
His colleagues said that he was a great programmer, and one of the first. You have to watch the entire film to see the portion where they say that.
David Hoffman filmmaker
JMP EAX ; ✈️
7:35 ㏂
Wednesday, August 2, 2023 (PDT)
Time in San Francisco, CA
🪪 : Because he knows that much about 📧 too.
The entire documentary used to be publicly available on YT. Now someone wants to honor VN by trying to make a fast buck.
I am the filmmaker and copyright holder of this film. A gentleman illegally posted it and I had it removed. As an independent filmmaker for 55 years, I make my living by licensing my films and selling DVDs and streaming video. Therefore posting the whole film is not something I can afford. Not trying to make a fast buck. The film was made more than 50 years ago. It still has not fully paid off.
David Hoffman-filmmaker
Does the documentary include any footage of JVN speaking? I know he was dead when it was made, but were you able to find any archival footage of him? Of others at IAS such as Bigelow or Pomerene?
Peter. I am sorry but I do not recognize any of those 2 names and there is no footage I know of of JVN speaking but for a small clip which is included in my full documentary. Maybe 1 min.
David Hoffman-filmmaker
Thanks for quick reply. Julian Bigelow and Jim Pomerene were engineers who worked on the IAS computer.
What about Charles Babbage?
The triangle was applied “, right?
Mr. Hoffman it was my understanding that Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper were the first programmers. Walter Isaacson's recent book attributes the brunt of the inception of computer programming to women and within Von Neumann's time it was Grace Hopper who set the lead not Von Neumann. This is at least my initial understanding reading Isaacson's books.
Great documentary! thanks for sharing this.
Sad to see the arguments below. Little people can't help but create invective rather than to CREATE.
Dear Eddie: I am not an expert on the question you raise. So I can't be certain if it is political correctness that has said these women were 1st or the facts on the ground at that time. I do know that I was very young when I did the film on Von Neumann and the men interviewed in the film testified to his unique early programming qualities. He did not work with others and was seen by them as a brilliant programmer of that giant machine standing behind the man speaking.
David Hoffman-filmmaker
These ideas are somewhat "binary" to use a computing term. The philosophical underpinnings of the self-replicating machine (or "code" as it would be referred to today) go back centuries. Leibnitz, Descartes, Boole, Babbage and Lovelace were all notable characters in the early story. In fact women did play a pivotal role in the development of actual machine code. This was partly an offshoot from their confusingly titled role as "computers" using earlier punch card systems, crude adding machines, mostly produced by IBM. These essentially data entry jobs were seen as an extension of secretarial work. So when the physical computer came into being, driven by exactly the same punch cards, their programming was an area of mathematics not considered too "high" for women at the time. It gave rise to many great contributions by women not least of which was JVN's wife, Klara Von Neumann. She was possibly the first real expert at coding the early physical computers (the "ENIAC" and "JOHNNIAC" seen behind Dr Goldstein in this film). Her obsession with this work led to a separation from her husband that grew them apart. But JVN was certainly first to acknowledge her contribution to their work.
Actually, it was von Neumann's wife. Hopper is due a lot of credit, but she was not the first programmer by a long shot. She was one of the most important early programmers, and that is very significant. But she was not the first, not even close.
@@DavidHoffmanFilmmaker Ada Lovelace wrote computer programs decades before Von Neumann was even alive. She wrote several programs in 1840 - yes 1840 - for a binary language computer that was designed but never built. It has nothing to do with political correctness, it has to do with facts.
Er, Ada Lovelace is generally considered the first computer programmer...
Ada Lovelace deserves recognition for writing machine code expressing a mathematical algorithm, no doubt, but I don't cut anyone down for putting her in a different category, given that there wasn't a machine that ever ran her code (analytical engine was never completed), so it is a bit theoretical in that regard. I don't mean to argue with you, just want to give context for anyone else who sees your comment.
In addition, Babbage's machine did not include the concept of a stored program. His working storage for data would have been modifiable your instructions, of course, but the instructions themselves would be holes punched in wooden planks or cards linked into an endless chain, like the Jacquard loom. Every computing or tabulating machine since Babbage, including the ENIAC, used plugboards and manual switches in some combination to give the computer its instructions. Von Neumann was the first to treat future instructions as data, loading them from a data input medium into the same storage as the computational data, then execute them.
In other words, the equivalent for Babbage would have been for the loom to get its instructions from the cloth it had previously woven.
Er, Ada Lovelace died 100 years before the first computer was built. Since time travel was not invented Ada Lovelace could not have possibly been the first computer programmer.
Charles Babbage did way more than Ada Lovelace did, before she even knew about his machine. All that Ada did was basically translate his notes to a different language. She didn't make many programs.
Von Neumann
A nightmare person
why is he talking so slow
Von Neumann didn't invent the stored computer concept! It was Alan Turing, who actually gave hardware specs when Von Neumann was just "thinking" about it. There's no doubt that VN contributed to various fields, but he did seem to just refine and publicise widely other people's ideas eg self-replicating machines, which were first posited by Descartes!
Considering you're the one who mentioned anything about Jews... most likely.