First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC

Von Neumann's 1945 report described the stored-program computer architecture that would become the standard blueprint for virtually every digital computer built since. The document proposed that instructions and data should share the same memory, enabling a machine to modify its own program — a radical departure from the hardwired calculators of the era. Written while consulting for the ENIAC team at the Moore School, it synthesized ideas from Turing's theoretical work, neurological models, and practical engineering constraints into a coherent design. The report's attribution remains contested: Eckert and Mauchly contributed significantly but received no credit, a controversy that shaped the early politics of computing. Despite being labeled a "first draft," the document defined an architectural paradigm that has persisted for eighty years.