Turing's cathedral
Legendary historian and philosopher of science George Dyson vividly re-creates the scenes of focused experimentation, incredible mathematical insight, and pure creative genius that gave us computers, digital television, modern genetics, models of stellar evolution--in other words, computer code. In the 1940s and '50s, a group of eccentric geniuses--led by John von Neumann--gathered at the newly created Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey. Their joint project was the realization of the theoretical universal machine, an idea that had been put forth by mathematician Alan Turing. This group of brilliant engineers worked in isolation, almost entirely independent from industry and the traditional academic community. But because they relied exclusively on government funding, the government wanted its share of the results: the computer that they built also led directly to the hydrogen bomb. George Dyson has uncovered a wealth of new material about this project, and in bringing the story of these men and women and their ideas to life, he shows how the crucial advancements that dominated twentieth-century technology emerged from one computer in one laboratory, where the digital universe as we know it was born.
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What Hacker News says
- "Turing's Cathedral" by George Dyson is also great. It's a kind of broad biography of all the great minds that started the computer age.
- One omission is Turing! Halmos gives JvN considerable credit for electronic computing without ever mentioning Turing or the connection between Turing’s universal machine and the stored-program computer. JvN knew Turing at Princeton, thought highly of his work, and offered him a position at IAS.
While the paper mentions the IAS in Princeton, it only briefly refers to the computer project which JvN directed, describing the IAS machine as “his electronic computer”. This is a surprisingly slight mention of a major project that ran for years and was highly influential (the project is the subject of George Dyson’s book “Turing’s Cathedral”, recommended).
- I always recommend Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe[0] by George Dyson when John von Neumann comes up, it's a fabulous read.
[0] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/44425/turings-cathe...
- I am in the middle of reading a fascinating book about the early days of computing: Turing’s Cathedral by George Dyson. It really opened my eyes to American engineering craft post WWW II.
We seem to take everything for granted now and forget what real engineering is like.
This review is 13 years old by itself:
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/mar/25/turings-cathed...
- There's more about at Barricelli at [1], and in a chapter in Turing's Cathedral [2], George Dyson's excellent book about John von Neumann and the making and uses of the IAS machine [3] at the Institute for Advanced Study.
[1] https://nautil.us/the-computer-maverick-who-modeled-the-evol...
[2] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/44425/turings-cathe...
- Turing's Cathedral by George Dyson
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