EDVAC

EDVAC was an early stored-program electronic computer developed at the University of Pennsylvania’s Moore School for the U.S. Army. It stored instructions and data in the same memory.

Stored-program computer: A computer that stores program instructions in memory alongside data. EDVAC was designed around this architecture, unlike machines that required rewiring to change programs.
ENIAC: An early electronic general-purpose computer built at the University of Pennsylvania during World War II. The Moore School team’s experience with ENIAC informed EDVAC’s development.
Herman Goldstine: An American mathematician and military liaison who helped coordinate wartime computing projects. Goldstine connected the Army with the Moore School team and helped circulate von Neumann’s report.
Von Neumann architecture: A computer architecture in which instructions and data share a memory and travel through common pathways. EDVAC’s design helped make this architecture influential, though the label oversimplifies its collaborative origins.
Mercury delay-line memory: A computer memory that stores bits as acoustic pulses circulating through tubes of mercury. EDVAC used mercury delay lines for its main electronic memory.
First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC: John von Neumann’s 1945 report describing a stored-program computer architecture. The report circulated EDVAC’s proposed design, though it was not a complete account of the team’s work.
Arthur Burks: An American logician and computer scientist who worked on ENIAC and EDVAC. Burks contributed to the stored-program design and later documented its technical principles.
Manchester Baby: A British experimental computer that ran its first stored program in 1948. Its successful demonstration preceded EDVAC’s completion and showed stored-program computing in operation.
Binary number: A number represented using only the digits zero and one. EDVAC represented information in binary, matching its electronic switching circuits.
John von Neumann: A Hungarian-American mathematician whose work spanned mathematics, physics, and computing. Von Neumann wrote the influential 1945 report outlining EDVAC’s architecture.

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