Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer and
Speaker 1: I love all things tech, and we are continuing the
Speaker 1: story of John von Neuman. Now, when we left off
Speaker 1: in our last episode, von Neuman, the mathematician and all
Speaker 1: around smarty pants, had just gotten married for a second time,
Speaker 1: this time to a woman named Clara Dan. Clara, who
Speaker 1: hadn't had any real formal advanced training in mathematics, would
Speaker 1: prove herself to be an incredibly adept mathematician and computer
Speaker 1: programmer in her own right, a remarkable woman. But back
Speaker 1: to von Neuman and the world as it was when
Speaker 1: this was all going around. So at this point, Europe
Speaker 1: was on the verge of war. This was ninety seven,
Speaker 1: so still two years before Germany would invade Poland, but
Speaker 1: tensions in Europe were mounting. I guess it was safe
Speaker 1: to say so it seemed like a foregone conclusion that
Speaker 1: there was going to be some sort of war, and
Speaker 1: that if war were to break out on a large scale,
Speaker 1: the United States would probably get involved eventually. And so
Speaker 1: von Neumann made another decision. This time, he decided to
Speaker 1: become a naturalized citizen of the United States. He had
Speaker 1: been living in the US since nineteen thirty, but he
Speaker 1: had not yet applied for citizenship. However, it was clear
Speaker 1: that if the United States were to go to war,
Speaker 1: he would need to be a citizen to guarantee his employment.
Speaker 1: He was worried that if he did not become a citizen,
Speaker 1: he might be barred from working in his field if
Speaker 1: he were seen as a European just living in the
Speaker 1: United States. So, according to one story about his application process,
Speaker 1: von Neumann was coached by his collaborator Oscar Morgenstern, who
Speaker 1: in the future would write that book on game theory.
Speaker 1: I mentioned in the last episode that that book wouldn't
Speaker 1: come out till but the two of them were already
Speaker 1: working closely together. He and another mathematician and logician named
Speaker 1: Kurt Girdle were both on their way to their immigration interviews.
Speaker 1: That is, von Neuman and Girdle together were on their
Speaker 1: way to these immigration interviews when Morgenstern asked if they
Speaker 1: had any questions about the Constitution, and reportedly Kurt Girl
Speaker 1: said that he had no questions, but he had seen
Speaker 1: several inconsistencies in the wording in the constitution, and he
Speaker 1: wondered if perhaps he should point those out to the
Speaker 1: immigration officers to make them aware of those inconsistencies, and
Speaker 1: Morgenstern reportedly discouraged that it sounds a little bit too
Speaker 1: cute and like a punchline to me. But I like
Speaker 1: the story, so I decided I want to share it.
Speaker 1: Lighten things up a little bit anyway. Also around this time,
Speaker 1: John von Neumann received a request from a British mathematician
Speaker 1: from Cambridge uh The request was for a proctor visitor
Speaker 1: fellowship at Princeton University. That mathematician's name was Alan Turing.
Speaker 1: This would be the same Alan Touring who would later
Speaker 1: propose what we now call the Turing test. This is
Speaker 1: the same Alan Turing who would go on to work
Speaker 1: on an early computer and help the British military crack
Speaker 1: Germany's secret codes during World War Two. Von Neumann had
Speaker 1: supported Turing's request. He had observed Touring a work on
Speaker 1: several occasions. He had seen Touring when he visited Cambridge,
Speaker 1: and he said that he had also observed Touring at
Speaker 1: Princeton when Touring had visited for a while and Touring
Speaker 1: von Neumann would both be instrumental in the early days
Speaker 1: of computer science, two of the really important pioneers in
Speaker 1: that world. Now, speaking of early computer science, in the
Speaker 1: early nineteen forties, von Neumann was said to have a
Speaker 1: funny conversation with Claude Shannon, and I've done an episode
Speaker 1: about Claude Shannon in the past. He was a mathematician
Speaker 1: who would go on to found information theory, so another
Speaker 1: very important person in this world. Anyway, in Shannon was
Speaker 1: preparing to present the result of his postdoctoral research work
Speaker 1: and he wasn't sure what he should call it. He
Speaker 1: was torn between referring to his logarithmic statistical formulation of
Speaker 1: data as either information or uncertainty, and he didn't know
Speaker 1: which way he should go, So he asked von Neuman's
Speaker 1: opinion on the matter, and John von Neumann reportedly said
Speaker 1: something to the effect that what Claude Shannon should call
Speaker 1: it is entropy, because the mathematical mechanics in his logarithmic
Speaker 1: statistical formulation were the same as those used in entropy equations.
Speaker 1: And more importantly, no one really knew what the heck
Speaker 1: entropy was in the first place, so there'd be very
Speaker 1: little chance of anyone challenging his thesis, which I thought
Speaker 1: was a pretty clever way of getting around it. So
Speaker 1: if you have to defend your ideas, just go with
Speaker 1: something so obscure that no one has enough expertise to
Speaker 1: contradict you. At least that seems to be the the
Speaker 1: the key of the matter. John von Neumann never wanted
Speaker 1: to sit around without something to think about, began to
Speaker 1: look into the UH, the question of logical design, and
Speaker 1: eventually what would become computer science. He was also studying
Speaker 1: the mathematics of explosives. He became an expert on shaped charges,
Speaker 1: which is an explosive that is shaped in a way
Speaker 1: to focus and direct the explosive energy in a very
Speaker 1: specific way. So you've probably heard about this. These are
Speaker 1: different ways of designing explosive devices for different purposes. It
Speaker 1: was likely this work that would lead to him being
Speaker 1: tapped to join a top secret research project for the
Speaker 1: United States military, the development of the atomic bomb, also
Speaker 1: known as the Manhattan pro object. Work had already been
Speaker 1: going strong on the Manhattan Project by the time John
Speaker 1: von Neumann was tapped to join it. UH J. Robert
Speaker 1: Oppenheimer managed the laboratory with lots of top notch scientists
Speaker 1: working alongside him like Ernest Lawrence, Stanislav Oulam, Neils bore
Speaker 1: Seth Neddermeyer. Tons of very intelligent, very influential scientists and
Speaker 1: engineers were working on this project, all of them trying
Speaker 1: to develop working atomic bombs. There were three main areas
Speaker 1: of research in the Manhattan project. There was using uranium
Speaker 1: as the nuclear material that would be at the heart
Speaker 1: of the atomic bomb, using plutonium, and then the hydrogen
Speaker 1: bomb or the fusion bomb, that would be the most
Speaker 1: powerful of the three, and it was also the most
Speaker 1: complex and the one that was on the longest timeline
Speaker 1: for development. For the uranium atomic bomb, the team had
Speaker 1: decided to go with a firing mechanism inside the bomb
Speaker 1: to detonate the actual nuclear UH payload. So this was
Speaker 1: referred to in general as a gadget, the gadget that
Speaker 1: would make the bomb go off. And what it would
Speaker 1: do is it would shoot one mass of subcritical uranium,
Speaker 1: essentially a hollow uranium bullet, into another mass of subcritical uranium.
Speaker 1: In this sense, subcritical means that individually the two masses
Speaker 1: would not have enough uranium two thirty five atoms to
Speaker 1: sustain a nuclear reaction. I've talked about this in the
Speaker 1: Nuclear Power episodes, but essentially what's happening is uranium when
Speaker 1: it decays, gives off some high speed neutrons, and if
Speaker 1: those neutrons were to collide with another unstable uranium atom,
Speaker 1: they could induce another split, another fission, and the reaction
Speaker 1: would continue. And in a nuclear power plant, you do
Speaker 1: this in in the hopes of creating a contained and
Speaker 1: sustainable nuclear reaction. When the nuclear bomb, you want something
Speaker 1: that's going to escalate two explosive force. So the challenge
Speaker 1: was you've got to find a way of doing this
Speaker 1: in a predictable and controllable matter, in the in the
Speaker 1: sense that you don't want a bomb to go off prematurely.
Speaker 1: So this that's why you're using subcritical masses of uranium.
Speaker 1: That way, if atom were to decay, it would not
Speaker 1: set off a chain reaction that would cause the bomb
Speaker 1: to go off prematurely. So when you fired this hollow
Speaker 1: uranium bullet at this massive uranium, those two subcritical masses
Speaker 1: would combine into a supercritical mass and that would start
Speaker 1: off the reaction that would perpetuate, releasing lots of energy,
Speaker 1: and in the grand scheme of things, that particular method
Speaker 1: would be easier to achieve than would be required for
Speaker 1: a plutonium bomb. So the gun method was not going
Speaker 1: to cut it with a plutonium based bomb. For one thing,
Speaker 1: they had determined that they would need more purified plutonium
Speaker 1: than they would be capable of producing. It would require
Speaker 1: too much uranium to go through the purification process to
Speaker 1: get the purified plutonium. It just wasn't feasible. But the
Speaker 1: team did determine that if they could sit around a
Speaker 1: subcritical mass of plutonium with a chemical explosive so it's
Speaker 1: got a chemical explosive coding around it essentially, and then
Speaker 1: ignite that chemical explosives so that it would direct the
Speaker 1: explosion inward. Instead of it being an explosion, it's an implosion.
Speaker 1: It all goes inward and creates a shock wave that
Speaker 1: compresses the subcritical plutonium mass so that it becomes super
Speaker 1: critical and then boom, there's your atomic bomb. But Seth Neddermeyer,
Speaker 1: who was working on the implosion approach, was having a
Speaker 1: heck of a time getting a symmetrical emplode, which would
Speaker 1: be necessary to make this work. His implosions were coming
Speaker 1: off asymmetrical, and he wasn't sure how to fix that,
Speaker 1: So enter John von Neumann. He took a look at
Speaker 1: the problem and suggested changes that would make the implosion
Speaker 1: method viable, and his ideas encouraged Oppenheimer, who dedicated more
Speaker 1: resources to testing out von Neumann's calculations, and it would
Speaker 1: become the operating principle that made the fat Man atomic
Speaker 1: bomb work. The atomic bomb Little Boy would use the
Speaker 1: uranium gun approach. There was another one called the thin Man,
Speaker 1: but that one never saw real operation because of problems
Speaker 1: with its design. Work continued for a while to try
Speaker 1: and make the plutonium work with this gun method. But
Speaker 1: they also discovered that if you had enough plutonium to
Speaker 1: set off the explosion, it would by itself release enough
Speaker 1: high speed neutrons to make a pre detonation reaction a
Speaker 1: near certain d. So, in other words, if you went
Speaker 1: with the gun approach and you were holding onto that
Speaker 1: nuclear bomb for any length of time, there was almost
Speaker 1: a percent chance that it was going to go off prematurely,
Speaker 1: just because the plutonium would be giving off enough neutrons
Speaker 1: to set everything off. And if there's one thing you
Speaker 1: don't want with your atomic bombs, it's the tendency for
Speaker 1: them to go off prematurely. Now. I've talked about the
Speaker 1: Manhattan Project before and how complicated it was, not just
Speaker 1: from a technological standpoint, but also an ethical standpoint. When
Speaker 1: the Army took over the atomic bomb project in the
Speaker 1: early forties, experts determined that it would take about three years.
Speaker 1: There's two, so I take about three years to produce
Speaker 1: enough uranium and plutonium to serve as the material in
Speaker 1: an atomic bomb. The projection ended up being correct, and
Speaker 1: it put the possibility of launching in attack with an
Speaker 1: atomic bomb in nineteen forty five. So even when people
Speaker 1: were working on these projects in forty two and forty
Speaker 1: three or d four, they knew that ninety five would
Speaker 1: be the earliest that they would be able to detonate
Speaker 1: an atomic bomb. And uh, this puts you in a
Speaker 1: really weird position, I would imagined, because if you're working
Speaker 1: on something and you're hoping to prove that it's a
Speaker 1: a viable weapon, then part of you might be hoping
Speaker 1: for award to stretch on long enough for you to
Speaker 1: be able to use it, which seems pretty dark to me.
Speaker 1: It doesn't seem it is super dark. But anyway, the
Speaker 1: production of the nuclear material was just one of the
Speaker 1: challenges that the group faced. Everything else would have to
Speaker 1: be designed and produced to make the atomic bomb of
Speaker 1: possibility in that tight time frame. So getting enough nuclear
Speaker 1: material was one challenge. Putting together the actual physical bombs,
Speaker 1: the the structures that would make this weapon viable, that
Speaker 1: was a separate challenge that also had to be completed
Speaker 1: in that same time frame. On July six, the researchers
Speaker 1: were able to conduct the first full scale test in
Speaker 1: New Mexico. A little more than a decade later, in
Speaker 1: nineteen seven, John von Neumann's cause of death would be
Speaker 1: determined to be bone cancer, and there have been more
Speaker 1: than a few researchers who suggested his presence at atomic
Speaker 1: tests at Bikinia to all actually and his proximity to
Speaker 1: radioactive material likely contributed to the development of that cancer.
Speaker 1: So while he played an instrumental role in the development
Speaker 1: of atomic bombs, at least the fat Man variety of
Speaker 1: atomic bombs, it would ultimately at least apparently contribute to
Speaker 1: his eventual demise. I have a lot more to say,
Speaker 1: but first let's take a quick break to thank our
Speaker 1: sponsor John von Neumann would work on the mathematics side
Speaker 1: of the Manhattan Project, so he wasn't actually building bombs.
Speaker 1: He was working out calculations using out through math how
Speaker 1: an explosion would happen, essentially creating simulations in this way.
Speaker 1: This was incredibly important because it was not practical to
Speaker 1: do lots of real world tests with these designs, so
Speaker 1: he was using mathematics to test these ideas and say, well,
Speaker 1: based upon the various components, will this work. The project
Speaker 1: had access to IBM tabulating machines, which von Neumann would
Speaker 1: work with. These would use punch cards to read and
Speaker 1: perform operations on data and then produce output that's on
Speaker 1: yet more punch cards. Von Neumann felt that a general
Speaker 1: purpose machine similar to the ones he worked with at
Speaker 1: Los Alamos would be useful for all sorts of scientific applications,
Speaker 1: so he immediately saw the potential for computers, but he
Speaker 1: wanted something that would be much more flexible, capable of
Speaker 1: running lots of different types of calculations, not something that's
Speaker 1: set up to run a specific type of calculation and
Speaker 1: that's all it can do. So he was also during
Speaker 1: the Manhattan Project selected to serve on the Target Selection
Speaker 1: Committee in nineteen he would be one of the people
Speaker 1: to recommend the future target site of the atomic bombs
Speaker 1: being built in the Manhattan Project, and the selection process
Speaker 1: for where the bombs would be dropped gets super duper
Speaker 1: squiacky for me. The committee decided that for the atomic
Speaker 1: bomb to be seen as effective and to act as
Speaker 1: a deterrent, it should be dropped on an area that
Speaker 1: it would have the largest impact as far as devastation
Speaker 1: was concerned, and so that started to create the parameters
Speaker 1: that they were using to make their choices. It had
Speaker 1: to be someplace within bombing range. They wanted someplace that
Speaker 1: would have closely built frame buildings because that would really
Speaker 1: show off the destructive power of the bomb, so it
Speaker 1: would have to be a city, and they also wanted
Speaker 1: to try and find a place that had not been
Speaker 1: bombed previously, so that way it would be evident how
Speaker 1: destructive this atomic bomb would be. The atomic bomb would
Speaker 1: create most of its damage from the primary blast of
Speaker 1: the weapon, and then the fires that would follow would
Speaker 1: create a lot more damage in a wider area beyond
Speaker 1: the blast range. So the committee selected Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Speaker 1: Nagasaki would become the target of fat Man as the
Speaker 1: bomb with the implosion detonation gadget that von Neumann had
Speaker 1: worked on. According to Stanford, von Neuman also contributed directly
Speaker 1: in this effort by calculating the optimal flight path for
Speaker 1: the bombers to take to minimize the risk of being
Speaker 1: shot down en route to the target sites. There was
Speaker 1: another example of the men maxing theory von Neuman had
Speaker 1: worked on nearly two decades earlier, and when he was
Speaker 1: talking about game theory, John von Neumann would go on
Speaker 1: to consult for the Rand Corporation, which at the time
Speaker 1: was operating as a think tank dedicated to running nuclear
Speaker 1: war scenarios. Neuman would argue for a concept called preventive war.
Speaker 1: You could refer to this as a preemptive strike, or
Speaker 1: maybe more appropriately a nuclear sucker punch, because the preemptive
Speaker 1: strike is typically a strategy we associate with two nuclear powers.
Speaker 1: It's the concept of a nuclear power launching an initial
Speaker 1: attack in an effort to knock out the second nuclear
Speaker 1: powers nuclear capabilities as much as possible so that no
Speaker 1: retaliation is is is available. Uh Nouman was going further
Speaker 1: than that. He was actually suggesting that the United States
Speaker 1: used nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union before the USSR
Speaker 1: could become a nuclear power at all. So essentially, he's saying,
Speaker 1: launch a full scale attack on Moscow because sooner or
Speaker 1: later they're going to build nuclear weapons. It's likely going
Speaker 1: to be sooner, so let's do it. Let's wipe them
Speaker 1: out before they can build these nuclear weapons. So his
Speaker 1: argument was, assuming that nuclear war is inevitable once the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union developed the ability to make nuclear weapons, the
Speaker 1: best thing would be to launch that nuclear attack against Moscow.
Speaker 1: But it was based on that assumption that nuclear war
Speaker 1: is in fact inevitable once enough superpowers have nuclear capabilities. Uh,
Speaker 1: so far that hasn't proven to be the case. So
Speaker 1: ya for that. But Neuman wasn't convinced that that was
Speaker 1: necessarily gonna hold true. He was actually quoted as having said,
Speaker 1: if you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say
Speaker 1: why not today? If you say today at five o'clock,
Speaker 1: I say, why not one o'clock. So he was gung
Speaker 1: ho on this at the time. The United States, suffice
Speaker 1: it to say, did not follow up on von Neuman's suggestion,
Speaker 1: and at least so far, nuclear war has not happened,
Speaker 1: though I'm personally not a fan of the mutually assured
Speaker 1: destruction strategy that various countries have taken either, but that's
Speaker 1: for a different podcast. Back at Princeton, von Neuman would
Speaker 1: become the manager of the Electronic Computer project. The goal
Speaker 1: was to design and build an electronic computer capable of
Speaker 1: using a stored program. Von Neuman had served as a
Speaker 1: consultant on an earlier project out of the University of Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: He had by chance met the leaders of that project.
Speaker 1: That was called the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, better
Speaker 1: known as NIAC. ENIAC was built as a general purpose
Speaker 1: programmable electronic computer. It was funded by the Army Ordinance Department,
Speaker 1: which wanted a computer capable of calculating complicated ballistics tables.
Speaker 1: Earlier computers were mostly electro mechanical devices, which meant they
Speaker 1: had real moving parts that operated as switches. But that
Speaker 1: also meant those computers were subject to wear and tear,
Speaker 1: and worse, for the terms of running lots of cut relations.
Speaker 1: Their speed was limited because they had to rely on
Speaker 1: this mechanical action of these various components. And electronic computer
Speaker 1: would eliminate all those moving parts and speed things up considerably.
Speaker 1: While ENIAC was still being constructed. Von Neumann would end
Speaker 1: up working with the ENIAC creators J. Pressper Eckert and
Speaker 1: John V. Mochley to design the successor to the ENIAC,
Speaker 1: and this would be EDVAC. That stood for Electronic Discrete
Speaker 1: variable Automatic Computer. So what was different about EDVAC. What
Speaker 1: made it different from ENIAC. That would be the computer's
Speaker 1: internal memory. EDVAC had it ENIAC didn't. EDVAC would have
Speaker 1: enough and memory to store a program in it as
Speaker 1: well as the data that the program would work on.
Speaker 1: So you could take a program, feed it to the
Speaker 1: computer and the associated data, and the computer would hold
Speaker 1: it in what we would now call RAM or random
Speaker 1: access memory, and the computer's processor would follow the instructions
Speaker 1: on the program and perform operations on the associated data. Now,
Speaker 1: essentially that's how all computers or most computers anyway, work today,
Speaker 1: But at the time it was revolutionary and the name
Speaker 1: people used to describe it was Von Neumann architecture. Now,
Speaker 1: before EDVAC, the program a computer would run was essentially
Speaker 1: part of the machine itself. So, like I said, with
Speaker 1: the tabulating machines in some cases, and then you had
Speaker 1: specific purpose computers, they could run one program because that's
Speaker 1: physically what they were capable of doing. They were the
Speaker 1: actual design of the computer itself was the program in part.
Speaker 1: But other computers you could technically change the program, but
Speaker 1: it would require physically rewiring the computer, like removing plugs
Speaker 1: from a plug board and plugging them into different outlets,
Speaker 1: and that was a laborious process and it was really
Speaker 1: easy to mess up. If you plug a plug in
Speaker 1: the wrong place, suddenly you've got errors in all of
Speaker 1: your programs. Where in all your your operations, I should say,
Speaker 1: because the plugging was the program. Now, while we call
Speaker 1: this approach to design the von Neuman architecture, it's important
Speaker 1: to remember this was actually a group effort. It wasn't
Speaker 1: just coming from John von Neuman. He's the guy who
Speaker 1: wrote about it and who popularized it, and he already
Speaker 1: had a celebrity status, so his name was associated with it,
Speaker 1: but he was not the sole contributor. He actually had
Speaker 1: lengthy discussions with lots of other computer pioneers like Eckered Emotally,
Speaker 1: also Arthur Burke's Herman Goldstein, and together they all published
Speaker 1: the formal explanation for what people would later call von
Speaker 1: Neuman architecture back in in a paper titled Preliminary Discussion
Speaker 1: of the Logical Design of an Electronic Computing Instrument. In
Speaker 1: just a note here, I'm not saying this to diminish
Speaker 1: John von Neuman's role in this. He was absolutely pivotal
Speaker 1: in the development of how computers work today. But it's
Speaker 1: also irresponsible to ignore the other contributors, so we have
Speaker 1: to make sure we we take time to acknowledge their
Speaker 1: work as well. While the internal memory element of ADVECS
Speaker 1: design tends to get the most attention, technically the von
Speaker 1: Neuman architecture includes more than just that. So in addition
Speaker 1: to internal memory, the von Neuman architecture would describe a
Speaker 1: computer that would also have an arithmetic UH logic unit
Speaker 1: which would kind of evolve into a cential processing unit,
Speaker 1: a control unit which was in charge of sending information
Speaker 1: to different parts of a computer. UH. There was an
Speaker 1: interface for input and an interface for output, and a
Speaker 1: bus the pathway that would allow data to transfer. So
Speaker 1: you had the control unit that was telling data where
Speaker 1: to go essentially, and you had the buses that would
Speaker 1: allow the data to go from one part of the
Speaker 1: computer to another. Then you had the arithmetic logic unit
Speaker 1: that would actually execute the operations. This computer would follow
Speaker 1: specific steps. So a typical program would be fetch an
Speaker 1: instruction from internal memory according to the address designated by
Speaker 1: the program counter, add the length of the instruction to
Speaker 1: the program counter, use the control unit to decode the instruction,
Speaker 1: and then direct the computer to execute whatever that instruction
Speaker 1: might be, and then go back to step one and
Speaker 1: do the next step in the instructions. So that was
Speaker 1: your basic computer program, which again sounds super primitive. There
Speaker 1: would never be a pure von Neumann architecture computer necessarily.
Speaker 1: There were a lot of variations on that, essentially improvements
Speaker 1: really to do stuff like error checking, which the original
Speaker 1: architecture did not account for. But it was the foundation
Speaker 1: for modern computing as we know it. I'm not done yet.
Speaker 1: I've got some more things to talk about with John
Speaker 1: von Neuman, but first let's take another quick break to
Speaker 1: thank our sponsor. The AdVac team worked hard and had
Speaker 1: a working computer in nineteen fifty one in limited operation.
Speaker 1: They expanded that to normal operations in nineteen fifty two.
Speaker 1: But the ad back wasn't the first computer to make
Speaker 1: use of the von Neuman architecture. That honor would go
Speaker 1: to the Manchester Mark one in England, which performed its
Speaker 1: first operations in nineteen EDVAC was part of the Ballistics
Speaker 1: Research Laboratory and it would run operations for several hours
Speaker 1: a day, every day until nineteen sixty two. Meanwhile, over
Speaker 1: at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, which von
Speaker 1: Neumann was heading up, he was he was a part
Speaker 1: of that for all of his life. The I A
Speaker 1: S Machine was under construction. This was another von Neumann
Speaker 1: architecture computer and it also was ready to go in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty one. Like d VAC, it was a binary computer,
Speaker 1: It had internal memory, and it weighed half a ton.
Speaker 1: It was a big, big machine. This is well before
Speaker 1: the age of manaturization, when you're using stuff like vacuum
Speaker 1: tubes for your instead of transistors. Another area of computer
Speaker 1: science that von Neuman would pioneer was cellular automata. So
Speaker 1: what the heck is that? Well, cellular in this case
Speaker 1: means cells within a grid. So imagine you have a
Speaker 1: sheet of grid paper and now imagine that every square
Speaker 1: on that sheet of grid paper is a cell. So
Speaker 1: what does the concept of automata come in? Well, now,
Speaker 1: Imagine that each of those cells in that grid paper
Speaker 1: has certain rules associated with that cell, and those rules
Speaker 1: relate to the states of the neighboring cells. So let's
Speaker 1: imagine you've got a sheet of grid paper in front
Speaker 1: of you. You pick a grid somewhere in the middle
Speaker 1: of the page. Now, in this case, it would mean
Speaker 1: that the rules for that cell that you're looking at
Speaker 1: depend in part on the state of the four cells
Speaker 1: that border it. In the cell above, below, and to
Speaker 1: either side of it. This is what we would call
Speaker 1: a von Neumann neighborhood. By the way, Now, let's say
Speaker 1: that all the rules have to do with the color
Speaker 1: of the cell. So maybe the central cell that you've picked,
Speaker 1: you you create a rule for that set that says,
Speaker 1: if the cell above me is red, then I should
Speaker 1: turn blue. Now, imagine all the cells in this grid
Speaker 1: have their own rules that relate to their neighboring cells,
Speaker 1: and all of these rules relate to color. Now imagine
Speaker 1: all those rules will carry out a according to time steps,
Speaker 1: almost like turns in a board game. And so you
Speaker 1: designate one cell to have a certain color. You're you're
Speaker 1: starting everything off. You say, all right, I'm going to
Speaker 1: change the color of this cell to blue, you advance
Speaker 1: the time step by one. Every rule that is in
Speaker 1: place for those neighboring cells then takes effect. So some
Speaker 1: cells might and that our neighboring and might say, all right,
Speaker 1: well that means I have to turn red, or another
Speaker 1: one might say I have to turn yellow. Another one
Speaker 1: might say, I do nothing at all, because the the
Speaker 1: fact that that cell is blue doesn't change anything for me.
Speaker 1: And then you advance the time step again. And now
Speaker 1: the neighboring cells of the cells that changed are reacting
Speaker 1: to those changes, and you advance the time step again,
Speaker 1: and so on and so forth. Now that approach has
Speaker 1: been used in a number of really interesting applications. I
Speaker 1: gave a very abstract, simple version, but there are real
Speaker 1: world applications for this, and it would also become one
Speaker 1: of the components in something von Neuman theorized about that
Speaker 1: I mentioned any podcasts about Maker Bought, and that would
Speaker 1: be the universal constructor. Von Neuman's universal constructor was an
Speaker 1: abstract notion of a self replicating machine that he was
Speaker 1: able to prove through this cellular automata approach. So when
Speaker 1: you would run this machine that was a universal constructor,
Speaker 1: it would be able to make a copy of itself.
Speaker 1: It would have blueprints for its own design, a method
Speaker 1: of following those blueprints and creating a copy of them,
Speaker 1: producing a copy of itself, including a copy of the blueprints,
Speaker 1: so that the copy of itself could then go on
Speaker 1: to make a copy of itself. So he could program
Speaker 1: each cell in one of these grids, so that would
Speaker 1: follow a sequence within a certain number of time steps
Speaker 1: in order to create a specific pattern to initiate a
Speaker 1: hoppy of the original and in the next cycle of
Speaker 1: time steps, it could do a copy of itself, and
Speaker 1: so on and so on, over and over and over again.
Speaker 1: Each cell in von Neuman's original proposal could have one
Speaker 1: of twenty nine different states at any given time step,
Speaker 1: based on the rules he had created. So, you know,
Speaker 1: I was saying red or blue, you know, or maybe
Speaker 1: it's clear or red or whatever. That's very you know,
Speaker 1: that's obviously binary. It's that's two states. You're either clear
Speaker 1: or your red or your red, or you're blue, or
Speaker 1: whatever it may be. He had twenty nine different states
Speaker 1: that each cell could be in. Now, this did not
Speaker 1: create an actual physical machine capable of doing work, but
Speaker 1: it acted kind of like a simulator for such a device,
Speaker 1: and he could make this work. He could make a
Speaker 1: set of rules that a grid that applied to a grid,
Speaker 1: and that if you were to initiate the action, it
Speaker 1: would actually create copies of a design over and over
Speaker 1: and over again, and within a certain number of time
Speaker 1: steps per copy. So it it acted as kind of
Speaker 1: a starting point for a lot of other work in
Speaker 1: this field, ranging from stuff like the rep rap project,
Speaker 1: where I was talking about a three D printer capable
Speaker 1: of printing its own copy, to the proposal of nanotechnology
Speaker 1: devices like molecular assemblers. This is a kind of a
Speaker 1: science fiction e sort of concept. These would be microscopic
Speaker 1: a similars that could construct material molecule by molecule or
Speaker 1: maybe even atom by atom um and that would allow
Speaker 1: us to make all sorts of stuff. If we could
Speaker 1: get down to construction on the molecular level and scale
Speaker 1: it so that you could produce something in a reasonable
Speaker 1: amount of time, you can make all sorts of things.
Speaker 1: This is kind of the basis of the Star Trek
Speaker 1: concept of of having the replicator. Von Neumann wrote a
Speaker 1: book on the subject, but it was not published until
Speaker 1: after he died, so his health was beginning to fail
Speaker 1: in the mid nineteen fifties. He received the Enrico Fermia
Speaker 1: Award from the Atomic Energy Commission in nineteen fifty six,
Speaker 1: and at that time he already knew he had cancer
Speaker 1: and that his time was short. Towards the end of
Speaker 1: his life, von Neumann, who up to that point had
Speaker 1: been agnostic, he didn't have any real belief in the
Speaker 1: existence or non existence of God. He actually converted to Christianity.
Speaker 1: The prevailing thought is he did so because he was
Speaker 1: terrified of death, and according to one biographer, he was
Speaker 1: said to have entertained the notion that Blaze Pascal was
Speaker 1: onto something in the form of Pascal's wager. This is
Speaker 1: a philosophical argument that states human beings should really believe
Speaker 1: in God because they're betting their existence of God with
Speaker 1: their lives. So the argument goes that a rational person
Speaker 1: should behave as if God definitely exists, and they should
Speaker 1: seek to believe in God, because if God does not exist,
Speaker 1: you don't really lose much when you die, You encounter
Speaker 1: the exact same fate as everybody else. However, if God
Speaker 1: does exist, and believing in God and behaving in a
Speaker 1: certain way is a prerequisite to going to Heaven versus
Speaker 1: going to Hell. Then you stand everything to gain if
Speaker 1: you go by that philosophy. So this falls in line
Speaker 1: with von Neuman's game theory that whole minimize your losses
Speaker 1: in the event of a worst case scenario. John von
Speaker 1: Neuman died on February eighth, nineteen fifty seven. He truly
Speaker 1: was a genius, and he made numerous contributions to our
Speaker 1: understanding of mathematics, not to mention the foundations of modern computing.
Speaker 1: And I did say at the beginning of these episodes
Speaker 1: that I would also address a few traits that some
Speaker 1: people have finally described as quirks, but I feel are
Speaker 1: actually much deeper flaws. One was his love of fast cars.
Speaker 1: Now that in itself isn't a flaw. There are a
Speaker 1: lot of people who love fast cars. Scott Benjamin is
Speaker 1: a good friend, and he loves cars. But von Neumann
Speaker 1: would drive so fast and so carelessly that he earned
Speaker 1: a reputation for wrecking cars for totaling them. It happened
Speaker 1: so regularly that one intersection at Princeton was called von
Speaker 1: Neumann Corner because he had wrecked more than one car
Speaker 1: in that location. He was said too often drive while
Speaker 1: he was distracted, including while he was reading. So that's
Speaker 1: not ideal as it shows a level of irresponsibility that
Speaker 1: could into the injury or death of someone, whether it's
Speaker 1: von Neumann or or someone completely not connected to the
Speaker 1: event at all other than you know, being in a
Speaker 1: colle vision. Von Neuman was also something of a hedonist.
Speaker 1: He was known to eat and drink to excess. His
Speaker 1: love of parties would continue throughout his life, and again,
Speaker 1: that's not necessarily a flaw unless it is taken to extremes,
Speaker 1: and from what I've read, it sounds like there might
Speaker 1: have been a few extreme cases in von Neuman's life.
Speaker 1: And he was also known to be kind of creepy.
Speaker 1: He liked being around young women, and he liked looking
Speaker 1: at their legs a lot. Apparently he would go so
Speaker 1: far as to lean down to look underneath desks in
Speaker 1: order to get a look at legs and maybe even
Speaker 1: pick up the skirt of a woman, which is absolutely despicable.
Speaker 1: It got to a point where he had such a
Speaker 1: reputation for doing this that some of the secretaries at
Speaker 1: Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project actually would have cardboard
Speaker 1: sheets that they could slide in front of their legs
Speaker 1: under their desks to blow his view, which is pretty
Speaker 1: darn creepy not cool anyway, There's no question that he
Speaker 1: was brilliant and a genius. But I'm also glad that,
Speaker 1: even though he was a genius, that not all of
Speaker 1: his ideas were adopted readily, because his argument that the
Speaker 1: United States should launch a preventive strike against the Soviet
Speaker 1: Union to wipe out that country before it could develop
Speaker 1: its own nuclear weapons seems particularly horrific to me. Millions
Speaker 1: of innocent people who had no say in the nuclear
Speaker 1: aspirations of the country they lived in and no contribution
Speaker 1: toward the development of nuclear weapons would have died. If
Speaker 1: that were the case, it would have been a massive
Speaker 1: slaughter of people who had no say in the eventual
Speaker 1: development of nuclear weapons. I find this notion impossible to justify.
Speaker 1: And while von Neuman argued that a nuclear war would
Speaker 1: be inevitable should the Soviets develop the capability to manufacture
Speaker 1: such weapons, and that a nuclear war would re devastation
Speaker 1: much much larger than launching a preventative strike against the
Speaker 1: Soviet Union, it turns out that that didn't happen at
Speaker 1: least it hasn't happened yet, So maybe one day there
Speaker 1: will be a nuclear war, which would in fact be
Speaker 1: absolutely terrible. But it may be that it's not a
Speaker 1: foregone conclusion the way von Neumann believed. So we can
Speaker 1: look back and say, at least so far, it seems
Speaker 1: like not bombing a country out of existence h for
Speaker 1: fear of them developing nuclear weapons was the right choice,
Speaker 1: because they did not launch a nuclear attack against us.
Speaker 1: They developed nuclear weapons, but we haven't had a war,
Speaker 1: so we would have killed millions of people and not
Speaker 1: prevented a war because the war hasn't happened anyway. But still,
Speaker 1: all of that being said, we have to remember von
Speaker 1: Neumann made incalculable contributions towards multiple disciplines, and the world
Speaker 1: would be a very different place if he had not
Speaker 1: done that. So for that I am thankful, and I
Speaker 1: think it is important that we take it to consideration
Speaker 1: all of a person's traits, their strengths, their weaknesses, their virtues,
Speaker 1: and their flaws. We should not just idolize people without
Speaker 1: critical thought. That is not a responsible thing to do,
Speaker 1: nor should we dismiss all the contributions. We have to
Speaker 1: weigh everything in kind and try and take a human perspective.
Speaker 1: All of us have contributions, all of us have flaws. Ah,
Speaker 1: but yeah, that that sums up my thoughts on von Neuman.
Speaker 1: He has written a ton of very information, informational, very educational,
Speaker 1: very interesting papers on numerous subjects. I urge you to
Speaker 1: go out and find some of those if you are
Speaker 1: really interested in the various topics I've talked about. They
Speaker 1: are very academic, so if you don't have the schooling
Speaker 1: or the expertise in those areas, you may rapidly find yourself,
Speaker 1: uh finding it really challenging to understand what is going on.
Speaker 1: I know I did, I've It's been a long time
Speaker 1: since I've taken calculus, for example. Uh. But they are
Speaker 1: incredibly important papers, so if you want to learn more,
Speaker 1: you can seek that out. I'm still looking for a
Speaker 1: really good biography about von Neuman. I've read a couple,
Speaker 1: and I don't think either are the ones I've read
Speaker 1: have been exactly what I'm looking for. So if you
Speaker 1: happen to know of a really good biography about von Neumann,
Speaker 1: I'm interested to learn more about that too, So hit
Speaker 1: me up. You can go to our website that is
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