If anyone wants a bit more detail and color on this story, I recommend "Turing's Cathedral" by George Dyson. I saw it in a bookstore last year and picked it up. Was quite pleased to get more background on these seminal characters in computing history and was astounded to see much came from this group, prompted by their utter conviction that it was paramount for the US to get hydrogen bombs before the USSR (most of them: the book touches tangentially on that debate).<p>Also impressed by how much they did with so little. For example, many of the first fusion particle simulations were one-dimensional on a radial axis from the center of the reaction. An infinitesimal sliver of the whole thing: just a serial line of particles.<p>Edit: George Dyson, not Freeman.
It is interesting that the man who invented the computer was the man who needed it the least. He had eidetic memory. He was able to compute infinite sums in his head. His vast intelligence was not crippling; he made huge contributions across many fields of science and mathematics and still managed to get married twice. <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann</a><p>Does anyone know of someone alive today that is even comparable to Von Neumann?
For those who are interested in the history of computing/computers/informatics, there is a mailing list (<a href="http://www.sigcis.org/node/19" rel="nofollow">http://www.sigcis.org/node/19</a>) for/by historians and enthusiasts on this topic. It is a quit list, but now and then something interesting pops up.
Previous posting, albeit with only one comment by myself: <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7924533" rel="nofollow">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7924533</a>