GEORGE DYSON Off-the-Shelf Parts, Off-the-Wall Ideas
Looking for the dawn of the digital universe? Check in the basement, next to the lavatory.
Sixty years ago, in the spring of 1946, a handful of electronic engineers showed up at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., and requested a place in the basement to plug in their tools. They were out of luck. “The only really useable space in our basement is that adjoining the men’s lavatory, to which you are most heartily welcome,” Electronic Computer Project director John von Neumann was told. Despite this inauspicious welcome, the engineers moved in, and in April, the project’s accountants recorded the first $4 for “electrical work.”
The Institute for Advanced Study was established ...
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