WEBVTT - John von Neumann and the Bomb 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:13.840 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.880 --> 0:00:16.520 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer and 0:00:16.560 --> 0:00:21.279 I love all things tech, and we are continuing the 0:00:21.360 --> 0:00:24.680 story of John von Neuman. Now, when we left off 0:00:24.720 --> 0:00:28.840 in our last episode, von Neuman, the mathematician and all 0:00:28.880 --> 0:00:32.560 around smarty pants, had just gotten married for a second time, 0:00:32.640 --> 0:00:36.360 this time to a woman named Clara Dan. Clara, who 0:00:36.400 --> 0:00:40.400 hadn't had any real formal advanced training in mathematics, would 0:00:40.440 --> 0:00:44.479 prove herself to be an incredibly adept mathematician and computer 0:00:44.600 --> 0:00:49.080 programmer in her own right, a remarkable woman. But back 0:00:49.120 --> 0:00:52.440 to von Neuman and the world as it was when 0:00:52.479 --> 0:00:55.200 this was all going around. So at this point, Europe 0:00:55.240 --> 0:00:58.400 was on the verge of war. This was ninety seven, 0:00:58.440 --> 0:01:01.960 so still two years before Germany would invade Poland, but 0:01:02.120 --> 0:01:06.240 tensions in Europe were mounting. I guess it was safe 0:01:06.280 --> 0:01:09.080 to say so it seemed like a foregone conclusion that 0:01:09.840 --> 0:01:11.560 there was going to be some sort of war, and 0:01:11.560 --> 0:01:14.120 that if war were to break out on a large scale, 0:01:14.520 --> 0:01:19.600 the United States would probably get involved eventually. And so 0:01:19.760 --> 0:01:23.120 von Neumann made another decision. This time, he decided to 0:01:23.160 --> 0:01:27.039 become a naturalized citizen of the United States. He had 0:01:27.040 --> 0:01:30.520 been living in the US since nineteen thirty, but he 0:01:30.600 --> 0:01:33.959 had not yet applied for citizenship. However, it was clear 0:01:34.040 --> 0:01:36.040 that if the United States were to go to war, 0:01:36.520 --> 0:01:39.960 he would need to be a citizen to guarantee his employment. 0:01:40.080 --> 0:01:42.840 He was worried that if he did not become a citizen, 0:01:43.120 --> 0:01:46.440 he might be barred from working in his field if 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:49.400 he were seen as a European just living in the 0:01:49.480 --> 0:01:54.680 United States. So, according to one story about his application process, 0:01:55.120 --> 0:01:59.400 von Neumann was coached by his collaborator Oscar Morgenstern, who 0:01:59.440 --> 0:02:02.560 in the future would write that book on game theory. 0:02:02.640 --> 0:02:05.080 I mentioned in the last episode that that book wouldn't 0:02:05.080 --> 0:02:07.880 come out till but the two of them were already 0:02:07.920 --> 0:02:12.640 working closely together. He and another mathematician and logician named 0:02:12.720 --> 0:02:16.880 Kurt Girdle were both on their way to their immigration interviews. 0:02:16.919 --> 0:02:20.040 That is, von Neuman and Girdle together were on their 0:02:20.080 --> 0:02:24.160 way to these immigration interviews when Morgenstern asked if they 0:02:24.240 --> 0:02:29.080 had any questions about the Constitution, and reportedly Kurt Girl 0:02:29.160 --> 0:02:31.440 said that he had no questions, but he had seen 0:02:31.520 --> 0:02:35.200 several inconsistencies in the wording in the constitution, and he 0:02:35.600 --> 0:02:37.960 wondered if perhaps he should point those out to the 0:02:37.960 --> 0:02:41.840 immigration officers to make them aware of those inconsistencies, and 0:02:41.880 --> 0:02:46.480 Morgenstern reportedly discouraged that it sounds a little bit too 0:02:46.560 --> 0:02:49.080 cute and like a punchline to me. But I like 0:02:49.120 --> 0:02:51.200 the story, so I decided I want to share it. 0:02:51.320 --> 0:02:54.520 Lighten things up a little bit anyway. Also around this time, 0:02:55.000 --> 0:02:58.919 John von Neumann received a request from a British mathematician 0:02:59.080 --> 0:03:04.359 from Cambridge uh The request was for a proctor visitor 0:03:04.480 --> 0:03:10.280 fellowship at Princeton University. That mathematician's name was Alan Turing. 0:03:10.880 --> 0:03:13.480 This would be the same Alan Touring who would later 0:03:13.520 --> 0:03:16.960 propose what we now call the Turing test. This is 0:03:17.000 --> 0:03:19.440 the same Alan Turing who would go on to work 0:03:19.520 --> 0:03:23.280 on an early computer and help the British military crack 0:03:23.520 --> 0:03:28.119 Germany's secret codes during World War Two. Von Neumann had 0:03:28.160 --> 0:03:32.040 supported Turing's request. He had observed Touring a work on 0:03:32.080 --> 0:03:36.280 several occasions. He had seen Touring when he visited Cambridge, 0:03:36.360 --> 0:03:39.320 and he said that he had also observed Touring at 0:03:39.320 --> 0:03:42.960 Princeton when Touring had visited for a while and Touring 0:03:43.120 --> 0:03:46.680 von Neumann would both be instrumental in the early days 0:03:46.800 --> 0:03:51.120 of computer science, two of the really important pioneers in 0:03:51.200 --> 0:03:55.320 that world. Now, speaking of early computer science, in the 0:03:55.360 --> 0:03:58.280 early nineteen forties, von Neumann was said to have a 0:03:58.360 --> 0:04:02.440 funny conversation with Claude Shannon, and I've done an episode 0:04:02.480 --> 0:04:05.279 about Claude Shannon in the past. He was a mathematician 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:09.000 who would go on to found information theory, so another 0:04:09.120 --> 0:04:13.200 very important person in this world. Anyway, in Shannon was 0:04:13.240 --> 0:04:16.480 preparing to present the result of his postdoctoral research work 0:04:17.160 --> 0:04:19.520 and he wasn't sure what he should call it. He 0:04:19.560 --> 0:04:23.719 was torn between referring to his logarithmic statistical formulation of 0:04:23.800 --> 0:04:29.159 data as either information or uncertainty, and he didn't know 0:04:29.200 --> 0:04:31.760 which way he should go, So he asked von Neuman's 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:34.719 opinion on the matter, and John von Neumann reportedly said 0:04:35.080 --> 0:04:38.080 something to the effect that what Claude Shannon should call 0:04:38.120 --> 0:04:43.000 it is entropy, because the mathematical mechanics in his logarithmic 0:04:43.080 --> 0:04:47.760 statistical formulation were the same as those used in entropy equations. 0:04:47.880 --> 0:04:51.919 And more importantly, no one really knew what the heck 0:04:52.080 --> 0:04:54.600 entropy was in the first place, so there'd be very 0:04:54.600 --> 0:04:58.320 little chance of anyone challenging his thesis, which I thought 0:04:58.320 --> 0:05:00.080 was a pretty clever way of getting around it. So 0:05:00.160 --> 0:05:02.400 if you have to defend your ideas, just go with 0:05:02.480 --> 0:05:07.320 something so obscure that no one has enough expertise to 0:05:07.360 --> 0:05:11.080 contradict you. At least that seems to be the the 0:05:11.080 --> 0:05:14.680 the key of the matter. John von Neumann never wanted 0:05:14.720 --> 0:05:18.000 to sit around without something to think about, began to 0:05:18.400 --> 0:05:22.520 look into the UH, the question of logical design, and 0:05:22.640 --> 0:05:26.400 eventually what would become computer science. He was also studying 0:05:26.400 --> 0:05:31.760 the mathematics of explosives. He became an expert on shaped charges, 0:05:32.279 --> 0:05:35.120 which is an explosive that is shaped in a way 0:05:35.160 --> 0:05:38.480 to focus and direct the explosive energy in a very 0:05:38.480 --> 0:05:41.600 specific way. So you've probably heard about this. These are 0:05:41.640 --> 0:05:47.040 different ways of designing explosive devices for different purposes. It 0:05:47.160 --> 0:05:50.000 was likely this work that would lead to him being 0:05:50.040 --> 0:05:53.640 tapped to join a top secret research project for the 0:05:53.720 --> 0:05:58.279 United States military, the development of the atomic bomb, also 0:05:58.320 --> 0:06:02.080 known as the Manhattan pro object. Work had already been 0:06:02.120 --> 0:06:05.400 going strong on the Manhattan Project by the time John 0:06:05.480 --> 0:06:10.119 von Neumann was tapped to join it. UH J. Robert 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:15.120 Oppenheimer managed the laboratory with lots of top notch scientists 0:06:15.320 --> 0:06:21.600 working alongside him like Ernest Lawrence, Stanislav Oulam, Neils bore 0:06:22.120 --> 0:06:27.920 Seth Neddermeyer. Tons of very intelligent, very influential scientists and 0:06:28.680 --> 0:06:31.560 engineers were working on this project, all of them trying 0:06:31.600 --> 0:06:35.000 to develop working atomic bombs. There were three main areas 0:06:35.040 --> 0:06:39.680 of research in the Manhattan project. There was using uranium 0:06:39.720 --> 0:06:42.320 as the nuclear material that would be at the heart 0:06:42.400 --> 0:06:46.760 of the atomic bomb, using plutonium, and then the hydrogen 0:06:46.839 --> 0:06:50.680 bomb or the fusion bomb, that would be the most 0:06:50.720 --> 0:06:53.839 powerful of the three, and it was also the most 0:06:53.880 --> 0:06:56.600 complex and the one that was on the longest timeline 0:06:56.640 --> 0:07:00.160 for development. For the uranium atomic bomb, the team had 0:07:00.200 --> 0:07:04.800 decided to go with a firing mechanism inside the bomb 0:07:04.960 --> 0:07:11.600 to detonate the actual nuclear UH payload. So this was 0:07:12.200 --> 0:07:14.720 referred to in general as a gadget, the gadget that 0:07:14.760 --> 0:07:17.800 would make the bomb go off. And what it would 0:07:17.840 --> 0:07:21.680 do is it would shoot one mass of subcritical uranium, 0:07:21.760 --> 0:07:28.360 essentially a hollow uranium bullet, into another mass of subcritical uranium. 0:07:28.400 --> 0:07:33.080 In this sense, subcritical means that individually the two masses 0:07:33.080 --> 0:07:36.400 would not have enough uranium two thirty five atoms to 0:07:36.560 --> 0:07:39.600 sustain a nuclear reaction. I've talked about this in the 0:07:39.680 --> 0:07:43.440 Nuclear Power episodes, but essentially what's happening is uranium when 0:07:43.440 --> 0:07:47.000 it decays, gives off some high speed neutrons, and if 0:07:47.000 --> 0:07:51.440 those neutrons were to collide with another unstable uranium atom, 0:07:51.560 --> 0:07:58.560 they could induce another split, another fission, and the reaction 0:07:58.600 --> 0:08:01.720 would continue. And in a nuclear power plant, you do 0:08:01.840 --> 0:08:05.400 this in in the hopes of creating a contained and 0:08:05.840 --> 0:08:09.840 sustainable nuclear reaction. When the nuclear bomb, you want something 0:08:09.840 --> 0:08:15.120 that's going to escalate two explosive force. So the challenge 0:08:15.280 --> 0:08:18.000 was you've got to find a way of doing this 0:08:18.240 --> 0:08:22.520 in a predictable and controllable matter, in the in the 0:08:22.560 --> 0:08:24.840 sense that you don't want a bomb to go off prematurely. 0:08:25.520 --> 0:08:30.200 So this that's why you're using subcritical masses of uranium. 0:08:30.240 --> 0:08:33.840 That way, if atom were to decay, it would not 0:08:34.080 --> 0:08:36.080 set off a chain reaction that would cause the bomb 0:08:36.160 --> 0:08:41.080 to go off prematurely. So when you fired this hollow 0:08:41.200 --> 0:08:45.600 uranium bullet at this massive uranium, those two subcritical masses 0:08:45.640 --> 0:08:50.240 would combine into a supercritical mass and that would start 0:08:50.240 --> 0:08:53.200 off the reaction that would perpetuate, releasing lots of energy, 0:08:53.760 --> 0:08:57.640 and in the grand scheme of things, that particular method 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:01.280 would be easier to achieve than would be required for 0:09:01.400 --> 0:09:04.880 a plutonium bomb. So the gun method was not going 0:09:04.920 --> 0:09:08.120 to cut it with a plutonium based bomb. For one thing, 0:09:08.760 --> 0:09:13.280 they had determined that they would need more purified plutonium 0:09:13.360 --> 0:09:17.080 than they would be capable of producing. It would require 0:09:17.080 --> 0:09:20.120 too much uranium to go through the purification process to 0:09:20.160 --> 0:09:23.520 get the purified plutonium. It just wasn't feasible. But the 0:09:23.559 --> 0:09:26.040 team did determine that if they could sit around a 0:09:26.120 --> 0:09:31.719 subcritical mass of plutonium with a chemical explosive so it's 0:09:31.720 --> 0:09:35.240 got a chemical explosive coding around it essentially, and then 0:09:35.320 --> 0:09:38.520 ignite that chemical explosives so that it would direct the 0:09:38.600 --> 0:09:42.319 explosion inward. Instead of it being an explosion, it's an implosion. 0:09:42.840 --> 0:09:44.960 It all goes inward and creates a shock wave that 0:09:45.040 --> 0:09:49.640 compresses the subcritical plutonium mass so that it becomes super 0:09:49.640 --> 0:09:54.400 critical and then boom, there's your atomic bomb. But Seth Neddermeyer, 0:09:54.640 --> 0:09:57.480 who was working on the implosion approach, was having a 0:09:57.520 --> 0:10:00.560 heck of a time getting a symmetrical emplode, which would 0:10:00.559 --> 0:10:04.640 be necessary to make this work. His implosions were coming 0:10:04.679 --> 0:10:08.600 off asymmetrical, and he wasn't sure how to fix that, 0:10:08.760 --> 0:10:11.520 So enter John von Neumann. He took a look at 0:10:11.520 --> 0:10:14.599 the problem and suggested changes that would make the implosion 0:10:14.679 --> 0:10:19.840 method viable, and his ideas encouraged Oppenheimer, who dedicated more 0:10:19.920 --> 0:10:25.440 resources to testing out von Neumann's calculations, and it would 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:29.200 become the operating principle that made the fat Man atomic 0:10:29.320 --> 0:10:32.920 bomb work. The atomic bomb Little Boy would use the 0:10:33.040 --> 0:10:36.480 uranium gun approach. There was another one called the thin Man, 0:10:36.600 --> 0:10:41.240 but that one never saw real operation because of problems 0:10:41.280 --> 0:10:44.880 with its design. Work continued for a while to try 0:10:44.880 --> 0:10:47.680 and make the plutonium work with this gun method. But 0:10:47.760 --> 0:10:51.000 they also discovered that if you had enough plutonium to 0:10:51.040 --> 0:10:55.320 set off the explosion, it would by itself release enough 0:10:55.440 --> 0:10:59.280 high speed neutrons to make a pre detonation reaction a 0:10:59.360 --> 0:11:01.640 near certain d. So, in other words, if you went 0:11:01.679 --> 0:11:05.360 with the gun approach and you were holding onto that 0:11:05.440 --> 0:11:08.439 nuclear bomb for any length of time, there was almost 0:11:08.480 --> 0:11:10.960 a percent chance that it was going to go off prematurely, 0:11:11.400 --> 0:11:14.440 just because the plutonium would be giving off enough neutrons 0:11:14.480 --> 0:11:17.800 to set everything off. And if there's one thing you 0:11:17.800 --> 0:11:20.000 don't want with your atomic bombs, it's the tendency for 0:11:20.040 --> 0:11:22.199 them to go off prematurely. Now. I've talked about the 0:11:22.240 --> 0:11:25.320 Manhattan Project before and how complicated it was, not just 0:11:25.400 --> 0:11:29.439 from a technological standpoint, but also an ethical standpoint. When 0:11:29.480 --> 0:11:32.120 the Army took over the atomic bomb project in the 0:11:32.120 --> 0:11:35.880 early forties, experts determined that it would take about three years. 0:11:36.120 --> 0:11:39.439 There's two, so I take about three years to produce 0:11:39.520 --> 0:11:41.880 enough uranium and plutonium to serve as the material in 0:11:41.920 --> 0:11:45.880 an atomic bomb. The projection ended up being correct, and 0:11:45.880 --> 0:11:48.040 it put the possibility of launching in attack with an 0:11:48.040 --> 0:11:53.440 atomic bomb in nineteen forty five. So even when people 0:11:53.480 --> 0:11:56.840 were working on these projects in forty two and forty 0:11:56.880 --> 0:11:59.760 three or d four, they knew that ninety five would 0:11:59.800 --> 0:12:02.680 be the earliest that they would be able to detonate 0:12:02.720 --> 0:12:06.000 an atomic bomb. And uh, this puts you in a 0:12:06.080 --> 0:12:09.840 really weird position, I would imagined, because if you're working 0:12:09.840 --> 0:12:12.760 on something and you're hoping to prove that it's a 0:12:13.760 --> 0:12:18.080 a viable weapon, then part of you might be hoping 0:12:18.160 --> 0:12:20.280 for award to stretch on long enough for you to 0:12:20.280 --> 0:12:24.040 be able to use it, which seems pretty dark to me. 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:27.480 It doesn't seem it is super dark. But anyway, the 0:12:27.480 --> 0:12:29.920 production of the nuclear material was just one of the 0:12:30.000 --> 0:12:33.240 challenges that the group faced. Everything else would have to 0:12:33.280 --> 0:12:35.920 be designed and produced to make the atomic bomb of 0:12:35.960 --> 0:12:40.280 possibility in that tight time frame. So getting enough nuclear 0:12:40.360 --> 0:12:45.120 material was one challenge. Putting together the actual physical bombs, 0:12:45.160 --> 0:12:50.240 the the structures that would make this weapon viable, that 0:12:50.360 --> 0:12:53.400 was a separate challenge that also had to be completed 0:12:53.440 --> 0:12:58.559 in that same time frame. On July six, the researchers 0:12:58.559 --> 0:13:01.120 were able to conduct the first full scale test in 0:13:01.200 --> 0:13:04.240 New Mexico. A little more than a decade later, in 0:13:04.320 --> 0:13:07.559 nineteen seven, John von Neumann's cause of death would be 0:13:07.600 --> 0:13:10.560 determined to be bone cancer, and there have been more 0:13:10.600 --> 0:13:13.720 than a few researchers who suggested his presence at atomic 0:13:13.800 --> 0:13:18.120 tests at Bikinia to all actually and his proximity to 0:13:18.240 --> 0:13:22.120 radioactive material likely contributed to the development of that cancer. 0:13:22.720 --> 0:13:26.679 So while he played an instrumental role in the development 0:13:26.960 --> 0:13:30.440 of atomic bombs, at least the fat Man variety of 0:13:30.480 --> 0:13:36.440 atomic bombs, it would ultimately at least apparently contribute to 0:13:36.559 --> 0:13:40.079 his eventual demise. I have a lot more to say, 0:13:40.120 --> 0:13:43.240 but first let's take a quick break to thank our 0:13:43.280 --> 0:13:54.560 sponsor John von Neumann would work on the mathematics side 0:13:54.640 --> 0:13:57.680 of the Manhattan Project, so he wasn't actually building bombs. 0:13:57.679 --> 0:14:01.839 He was working out calculations using out through math how 0:14:01.880 --> 0:14:05.559 an explosion would happen, essentially creating simulations in this way. 0:14:05.800 --> 0:14:08.840 This was incredibly important because it was not practical to 0:14:08.920 --> 0:14:13.640 do lots of real world tests with these designs, so 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:17.120 he was using mathematics to test these ideas and say, well, 0:14:17.160 --> 0:14:21.840 based upon the various components, will this work. The project 0:14:21.880 --> 0:14:25.960 had access to IBM tabulating machines, which von Neumann would 0:14:25.960 --> 0:14:28.480 work with. These would use punch cards to read and 0:14:28.480 --> 0:14:32.040 perform operations on data and then produce output that's on 0:14:32.200 --> 0:14:35.640 yet more punch cards. Von Neumann felt that a general 0:14:35.680 --> 0:14:38.760 purpose machine similar to the ones he worked with at 0:14:38.800 --> 0:14:44.000 Los Alamos would be useful for all sorts of scientific applications, 0:14:44.120 --> 0:14:48.360 so he immediately saw the potential for computers, but he 0:14:48.440 --> 0:14:52.640 wanted something that would be much more flexible, capable of 0:14:52.720 --> 0:14:56.640 running lots of different types of calculations, not something that's 0:14:56.640 --> 0:14:59.880 set up to run a specific type of calculation and 0:15:00.000 --> 0:15:03.440 that's all it can do. So he was also during 0:15:03.480 --> 0:15:07.680 the Manhattan Project selected to serve on the Target Selection 0:15:07.760 --> 0:15:12.040 Committee in nineteen he would be one of the people 0:15:12.080 --> 0:15:15.440 to recommend the future target site of the atomic bombs 0:15:15.440 --> 0:15:19.080 being built in the Manhattan Project, and the selection process 0:15:19.120 --> 0:15:22.120 for where the bombs would be dropped gets super duper 0:15:22.120 --> 0:15:25.480 squiacky for me. The committee decided that for the atomic 0:15:25.520 --> 0:15:28.200 bomb to be seen as effective and to act as 0:15:28.200 --> 0:15:32.040 a deterrent, it should be dropped on an area that 0:15:32.160 --> 0:15:36.359 it would have the largest impact as far as devastation 0:15:36.480 --> 0:15:41.200 was concerned, and so that started to create the parameters 0:15:41.240 --> 0:15:43.640 that they were using to make their choices. It had 0:15:43.640 --> 0:15:47.280 to be someplace within bombing range. They wanted someplace that 0:15:47.320 --> 0:15:51.120 would have closely built frame buildings because that would really 0:15:51.120 --> 0:15:54.280 show off the destructive power of the bomb, so it 0:15:54.280 --> 0:15:58.160 would have to be a city, and they also wanted 0:15:58.200 --> 0:16:01.440 to try and find a place that had not been 0:16:01.480 --> 0:16:05.440 bombed previously, so that way it would be evident how 0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:08.200 destructive this atomic bomb would be. The atomic bomb would 0:16:08.400 --> 0:16:11.440 create most of its damage from the primary blast of 0:16:11.480 --> 0:16:15.280 the weapon, and then the fires that would follow would 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:18.360 create a lot more damage in a wider area beyond 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:24.040 the blast range. So the committee selected Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 0:16:24.360 --> 0:16:28.000 Nagasaki would become the target of fat Man as the 0:16:28.040 --> 0:16:31.240 bomb with the implosion detonation gadget that von Neumann had 0:16:31.240 --> 0:16:35.920 worked on. According to Stanford, von Neuman also contributed directly 0:16:36.000 --> 0:16:39.360 in this effort by calculating the optimal flight path for 0:16:39.440 --> 0:16:42.480 the bombers to take to minimize the risk of being 0:16:42.520 --> 0:16:45.240 shot down en route to the target sites. There was 0:16:45.240 --> 0:16:48.480 another example of the men maxing theory von Neuman had 0:16:48.520 --> 0:16:51.920 worked on nearly two decades earlier, and when he was 0:16:52.120 --> 0:16:55.680 talking about game theory, John von Neumann would go on 0:16:55.720 --> 0:16:58.800 to consult for the Rand Corporation, which at the time 0:16:58.840 --> 0:17:02.200 was operating as a think tank dedicated to running nuclear 0:17:02.240 --> 0:17:07.680 war scenarios. Neuman would argue for a concept called preventive war. 0:17:08.480 --> 0:17:12.280 You could refer to this as a preemptive strike, or 0:17:12.400 --> 0:17:18.240 maybe more appropriately a nuclear sucker punch, because the preemptive 0:17:18.280 --> 0:17:22.560 strike is typically a strategy we associate with two nuclear powers. 0:17:22.600 --> 0:17:25.880 It's the concept of a nuclear power launching an initial 0:17:25.920 --> 0:17:29.360 attack in an effort to knock out the second nuclear 0:17:29.400 --> 0:17:33.280 powers nuclear capabilities as much as possible so that no 0:17:33.400 --> 0:17:38.080 retaliation is is is available. Uh Nouman was going further 0:17:38.160 --> 0:17:40.560 than that. He was actually suggesting that the United States 0:17:40.600 --> 0:17:45.320 used nuclear weapons against the Soviet Union before the USSR 0:17:45.440 --> 0:17:48.120 could become a nuclear power at all. So essentially, he's saying, 0:17:48.880 --> 0:17:53.280 launch a full scale attack on Moscow because sooner or 0:17:53.359 --> 0:17:55.359 later they're going to build nuclear weapons. It's likely going 0:17:55.400 --> 0:17:57.919 to be sooner, so let's do it. Let's wipe them 0:17:57.920 --> 0:18:01.919 out before they can build these nuclear weapons. So his 0:18:02.000 --> 0:18:05.080 argument was, assuming that nuclear war is inevitable once the 0:18:05.119 --> 0:18:08.320 Soviet Union developed the ability to make nuclear weapons, the 0:18:08.359 --> 0:18:11.960 best thing would be to launch that nuclear attack against Moscow. 0:18:12.720 --> 0:18:15.240 But it was based on that assumption that nuclear war 0:18:15.640 --> 0:18:23.360 is in fact inevitable once enough superpowers have nuclear capabilities. Uh, 0:18:23.600 --> 0:18:25.879 so far that hasn't proven to be the case. So 0:18:26.080 --> 0:18:30.439 ya for that. But Neuman wasn't convinced that that was 0:18:30.600 --> 0:18:35.240 necessarily gonna hold true. He was actually quoted as having said, 0:18:35.680 --> 0:18:38.840 if you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say 0:18:38.880 --> 0:18:41.399 why not today? If you say today at five o'clock, 0:18:41.440 --> 0:18:46.120 I say, why not one o'clock. So he was gung 0:18:46.200 --> 0:18:48.920 ho on this at the time. The United States, suffice 0:18:48.920 --> 0:18:52.160 it to say, did not follow up on von Neuman's suggestion, 0:18:52.840 --> 0:18:55.280 and at least so far, nuclear war has not happened, 0:18:55.320 --> 0:18:58.240 though I'm personally not a fan of the mutually assured 0:18:58.280 --> 0:19:02.800 destruction strategy that various countries have taken either, but that's 0:19:02.800 --> 0:19:06.800 for a different podcast. Back at Princeton, von Neuman would 0:19:06.800 --> 0:19:10.920 become the manager of the Electronic Computer project. The goal 0:19:11.040 --> 0:19:14.720 was to design and build an electronic computer capable of 0:19:14.840 --> 0:19:18.440 using a stored program. Von Neuman had served as a 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:22.400 consultant on an earlier project out of the University of Pennsylvania. 0:19:22.480 --> 0:19:26.280 He had by chance met the leaders of that project. 0:19:26.359 --> 0:19:31.000 That was called the Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer, better 0:19:31.040 --> 0:19:34.919 known as NIAC. ENIAC was built as a general purpose 0:19:34.960 --> 0:19:39.440 programmable electronic computer. It was funded by the Army Ordinance Department, 0:19:39.480 --> 0:19:43.800 which wanted a computer capable of calculating complicated ballistics tables. 0:19:44.560 --> 0:19:50.160 Earlier computers were mostly electro mechanical devices, which meant they 0:19:50.200 --> 0:19:53.800 had real moving parts that operated as switches. But that 0:19:53.880 --> 0:19:56.560 also meant those computers were subject to wear and tear, 0:19:56.680 --> 0:20:00.520 and worse, for the terms of running lots of cut relations. 0:20:00.960 --> 0:20:03.800 Their speed was limited because they had to rely on 0:20:03.840 --> 0:20:08.720 this mechanical action of these various components. And electronic computer 0:20:08.840 --> 0:20:12.280 would eliminate all those moving parts and speed things up considerably. 0:20:12.880 --> 0:20:16.800 While ENIAC was still being constructed. Von Neumann would end 0:20:16.840 --> 0:20:20.520 up working with the ENIAC creators J. Pressper Eckert and 0:20:20.640 --> 0:20:25.040 John V. Mochley to design the successor to the ENIAC, 0:20:25.440 --> 0:20:29.600 and this would be EDVAC. That stood for Electronic Discrete 0:20:29.760 --> 0:20:34.520 variable Automatic Computer. So what was different about EDVAC. What 0:20:34.600 --> 0:20:37.879 made it different from ENIAC. That would be the computer's 0:20:37.960 --> 0:20:42.080 internal memory. EDVAC had it ENIAC didn't. EDVAC would have 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:45.600 enough and memory to store a program in it as 0:20:45.640 --> 0:20:47.639 well as the data that the program would work on. 0:20:48.240 --> 0:20:51.359 So you could take a program, feed it to the 0:20:51.400 --> 0:20:55.600 computer and the associated data, and the computer would hold 0:20:56.000 --> 0:20:58.520 it in what we would now call RAM or random 0:20:58.520 --> 0:21:02.440 access memory, and the computer's processor would follow the instructions 0:21:02.520 --> 0:21:06.880 on the program and perform operations on the associated data. Now, 0:21:06.960 --> 0:21:11.359 essentially that's how all computers or most computers anyway, work today, 0:21:11.400 --> 0:21:14.840 But at the time it was revolutionary and the name 0:21:14.880 --> 0:21:19.560 people used to describe it was Von Neumann architecture. Now, 0:21:19.600 --> 0:21:23.119 before EDVAC, the program a computer would run was essentially 0:21:23.280 --> 0:21:26.720 part of the machine itself. So, like I said, with 0:21:26.760 --> 0:21:29.600 the tabulating machines in some cases, and then you had 0:21:29.600 --> 0:21:33.879 specific purpose computers, they could run one program because that's 0:21:34.240 --> 0:21:36.960 physically what they were capable of doing. They were the 0:21:37.000 --> 0:21:40.440 actual design of the computer itself was the program in part. 0:21:41.480 --> 0:21:44.359 But other computers you could technically change the program, but 0:21:44.400 --> 0:21:49.160 it would require physically rewiring the computer, like removing plugs 0:21:49.160 --> 0:21:52.320 from a plug board and plugging them into different outlets, 0:21:52.920 --> 0:21:55.160 and that was a laborious process and it was really 0:21:55.200 --> 0:21:56.919 easy to mess up. If you plug a plug in 0:21:56.920 --> 0:21:59.000 the wrong place, suddenly you've got errors in all of 0:21:59.000 --> 0:22:02.560 your programs. Where in all your your operations, I should say, 0:22:02.560 --> 0:22:07.080 because the plugging was the program. Now, while we call 0:22:07.560 --> 0:22:12.280 this approach to design the von Neuman architecture, it's important 0:22:12.320 --> 0:22:15.119 to remember this was actually a group effort. It wasn't 0:22:15.280 --> 0:22:18.440 just coming from John von Neuman. He's the guy who 0:22:18.480 --> 0:22:22.240 wrote about it and who popularized it, and he already 0:22:22.280 --> 0:22:26.120 had a celebrity status, so his name was associated with it, 0:22:26.400 --> 0:22:29.800 but he was not the sole contributor. He actually had 0:22:29.920 --> 0:22:34.240 lengthy discussions with lots of other computer pioneers like Eckered Emotally, 0:22:34.520 --> 0:22:39.400 also Arthur Burke's Herman Goldstein, and together they all published 0:22:39.480 --> 0:22:43.040 the formal explanation for what people would later call von 0:22:43.119 --> 0:22:48.639 Neuman architecture back in in a paper titled Preliminary Discussion 0:22:48.760 --> 0:22:53.000 of the Logical Design of an Electronic Computing Instrument. In 0:22:53.040 --> 0:22:56.199 just a note here, I'm not saying this to diminish 0:22:56.440 --> 0:23:00.520 John von Neuman's role in this. He was absolutely pivotal 0:23:00.640 --> 0:23:03.640 in the development of how computers work today. But it's 0:23:03.640 --> 0:23:07.560 also irresponsible to ignore the other contributors, so we have 0:23:07.720 --> 0:23:11.760 to make sure we we take time to acknowledge their 0:23:11.800 --> 0:23:16.240 work as well. While the internal memory element of ADVECS 0:23:16.280 --> 0:23:19.359 design tends to get the most attention, technically the von 0:23:19.440 --> 0:23:23.280 Neuman architecture includes more than just that. So in addition 0:23:23.359 --> 0:23:27.440 to internal memory, the von Neuman architecture would describe a 0:23:27.480 --> 0:23:32.200 computer that would also have an arithmetic UH logic unit 0:23:32.480 --> 0:23:35.080 which would kind of evolve into a cential processing unit, 0:23:35.359 --> 0:23:39.320 a control unit which was in charge of sending information 0:23:39.800 --> 0:23:42.560 to different parts of a computer. UH. There was an 0:23:42.560 --> 0:23:46.760 interface for input and an interface for output, and a 0:23:46.880 --> 0:23:50.320 bus the pathway that would allow data to transfer. So 0:23:50.359 --> 0:23:52.800 you had the control unit that was telling data where 0:23:52.840 --> 0:23:56.040 to go essentially, and you had the buses that would 0:23:56.040 --> 0:23:58.480 allow the data to go from one part of the 0:23:58.520 --> 0:24:02.880 computer to another. Then you had the arithmetic logic unit 0:24:02.960 --> 0:24:07.159 that would actually execute the operations. This computer would follow 0:24:07.400 --> 0:24:11.479 specific steps. So a typical program would be fetch an 0:24:11.480 --> 0:24:15.439 instruction from internal memory according to the address designated by 0:24:15.480 --> 0:24:19.439 the program counter, add the length of the instruction to 0:24:19.520 --> 0:24:23.600 the program counter, use the control unit to decode the instruction, 0:24:23.760 --> 0:24:26.640 and then direct the computer to execute whatever that instruction 0:24:26.760 --> 0:24:29.960 might be, and then go back to step one and 0:24:30.040 --> 0:24:34.760 do the next step in the instructions. So that was 0:24:34.800 --> 0:24:39.080 your basic computer program, which again sounds super primitive. There 0:24:39.119 --> 0:24:44.359 would never be a pure von Neumann architecture computer necessarily. 0:24:44.400 --> 0:24:47.959 There were a lot of variations on that, essentially improvements 0:24:47.960 --> 0:24:51.400 really to do stuff like error checking, which the original 0:24:51.480 --> 0:24:56.720 architecture did not account for. But it was the foundation 0:24:57.000 --> 0:25:01.160 for modern computing as we know it. I'm not done yet. 0:25:01.200 --> 0:25:04.120 I've got some more things to talk about with John 0:25:04.200 --> 0:25:06.840 von Neuman, but first let's take another quick break to 0:25:06.920 --> 0:25:17.520 thank our sponsor. The AdVac team worked hard and had 0:25:17.560 --> 0:25:21.320 a working computer in nineteen fifty one in limited operation. 0:25:21.520 --> 0:25:24.440 They expanded that to normal operations in nineteen fifty two. 0:25:24.920 --> 0:25:27.520 But the ad back wasn't the first computer to make 0:25:27.640 --> 0:25:30.280 use of the von Neuman architecture. That honor would go 0:25:30.400 --> 0:25:34.200 to the Manchester Mark one in England, which performed its 0:25:34.240 --> 0:25:39.080