Dear Mai and list -

Do you think that the illustration in Dyson's book actually is part of the manuscript? It looks rather like a page of notes to me, with a summary of the "von Neumann architecture" and some diagrams copied from various places in the report. Can anyone identify the handwriting?

A year or two ago, David Grier gave a nice talk at the Science Museum in London during which he mentioned having come across a manuscript of the First Draft in the Library of Congress. He didn't have a detailed reference for it, however. I contacted the Library of Congress, but they were unable to locate such a manuscript.

If I remember correctly, Grier said the manuscript was in Herman Goldstine's handwriting and that Goldstine had, later in life, repeatedly claimed credit for drafting the document. This is slightly at odds with Goldstine's letter of 15 May 1945 to von Neumann, where he says

I forwarded under separate cover the MSS and a copy of your report on the EDVAC, also the original typescript was sent to Bergmann. Inasmuch as several dumb typists combined their talents in typing the script there are a lot of errors, which I got discouraged over.

It's rather unclear how many separate documents are being referred to here. Tom Haigh, Crispin Rope and I discuss this briefly in our forthcoming ENIAC book. Tom uncovered a typescript of the First Draft in Arthur Burks' archive, which Burks describes thus

This is a preliminary draft of the report issued June 30, 1945. It contains pages and figures not in the June 30 report.

We believe that this version of the report is the one that Goldstine is referring to in his letter, and that it was retyped, with a couple of sections being omitted, for the mimeographed version that was circulated in June, 1945.

Also relevant to this discussion is von Neumann's letter of May 8, 1945 to Goldstine, in which von Neumann says:

[This letter] contains some minor changes and comments concerning the code for the EDVAC, which I gave at the end of the manuscript - part [sic - there are spaces round the hyphen in the letter, but it would make more sense if von Neumann had intended to write "manuscript-part"] which you have, and a rather detailed discussion of the way to express this code ...

The contents of this letter belong, of course, in the manuscript and i will continue the manuscript and incorporate these things also after I get it back from you ...

There's no evidence I know of that this happened. Burks bound a copy of this letter together with his copy of the first typescript, but none of the new material from this letter got included in the widely circulated June 30 version.

To me, the two letters suggest quite strongly that von Neumann had written a manuscript, sent it to Goldstine to get comments from the other members of the EDVAC team (especially Burks, Eckert and Mauchly) and that after getting it typed up, Goldstine returned it to him (or at least was planning to do so). But where this manuscript might now be remains a bit of a mystery.

Best wishes,

Mark

On 1 September 2015 at 15:56, Mai Sugimoto <nix.pura@gmail.com> wrote:

Dear SIGCIS members:

I found George Dyson's book, Turing's Cathedral (2012), seems to show
the original hand-written version of the "First Draft" (probably?) in
a picture page, which is on 13 pages after p.136. Since the caption
says the picture is from Princeton University Libraries, I contacted
archivists of the Libraries to access the manuscript. But the
archivists answered they cannot find any material like the picture
within the collection or elsewhere in related collection. I also asked
to the IAS Library, but they cannot find anything, either. Then, as
the archivists suggested, I contacted the publisher to send a message
to Mr. Dyson. They told me just a forwarding address, so I sent a
regular mail to Mr. Dyson in last February to make sure of the
location of the manuscript.

I have not received the reply yet. I am stranded. Does anyone know
contact information of Dyson, or have any idea about the picture on
the book or the original hand-written version of the draft? My
colleagues and I have been working of a Japanese translation of von
Neumann's original paper. Dyson's book is very interesting, but it
seems to have a lot of unreferenced information, so my collaborators
and I think that we should be careful to handle this book in the
bibliographical comments.

Best,

Mai Sugimoto
Associate Professor
Faculty of Sociology, Kansai University
3-3-35, Yamate-cho, Suita-shi
Osaka, Japan 564-8680
msgmt@kansai-u.ac.jp
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