1 min readMar 19, 2019
- It’s truly surprising how many intellectual titans — Pascal and Leibniz as well — messed with computing devices early in their careers. It’s as if they anticipated the 20th century, intellectually.
- Don’t blame me! Blame my editor! ;)
- Yep yep. In a sense, computers in UK won the war vs Germany, computers in USA won the war vs Japan (I’m sure you know the tale… although we take this with a grain of salt… the simpler bomb didn’t need von Neumann’s advanced calculations afaict)
- Oh I know — and that’s my point exactly! The world celebrates Yuri. But in the US, strangely…. we don’t. A few science types will get together to celebrate it, but hardly anyone outside of academic geekdom is exposed to it.
