[HN Gopher] The birth of random-access memory
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       The birth of random-access memory
        
       Author : 2517AD
       Score  : 35 points
       Date   : 2022-07-21 18:06 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
        
       | dboreham wrote:
       | Curious how readout worked and whether readout was destructive.
        
         | kps wrote:
         | Yes. Wikipedia actually has more information than the IEEE
         | article.
         | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williams_tube#Working_principl...
        
       | ngmc wrote:
       | Some robots made a cool musical about this:
       | 
       | https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nZZjkBu_E4olFSb5Ey...
        
       | ncmncm wrote:
       | John von Neumann usually gets credit for this and numerous other
       | details still faithfully reproduced in our pocket supercomputers,
       | but he was summarizing the work of many others mostly gagged by
       | Brits' Official Secrets Act.
       | 
       | Von Neumann doesn't need that recognition, having created several
       | other still-lively fields single-handed. But the clarity of his
       | presentation did make readers smarter, by making the profound
       | innovations seem obvious. They were not.
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | krallja wrote:
         | Pres Eckert independently discovered the stored program
         | concept, which von Neumann included in his EDVAC report. Now we
         | call it a "von Neumann architecture" when it really should be
         | "Eckert architecture," or one of the British independent
         | discoverers. As you said -- von Neumann doesn't need that
         | recognition -- and he likely used his position as a revered
         | wartime physicist to grab it for himself anyway.
        
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       (page generated 2022-07-21 23:01 UTC)