The Stored-Program Computer
Eloína Peláez · Social Studies of Science · 1999
This paper examines the contrasting understandings of the stored program and of computing embodied in John von Neumann's Draft Report on the EDVAC and Alan Turing's ACE Report, and their different relations with the mathematical and engineering traditions. It is suggested that the far greater influence of von Neumann's report should be understood in terms of intrumentality, and of the complementarity which this implies between forms of thought and forms of social organization.