User:Boris Tsirelson/Sandbox1

Ordinary differential equations can be solved numerically by analog computers, but partial differential equations cannot, which was very important for von Neumann when building the first computer of the so-called von Neumann architecture.

First Draft of a Report

   on the EDVAC
             by
     John von Neumann

1.2 An automatic computing system is a (usually highly composite) device, which can carry out instructions to perform calculations of a considerable order of complexity—e.g. to solve a non-linear partial differential equation in 2 or 3 independent variables numerically.

   This report has been published in: IEEE Annals of the History of Computing, Vol. 15, No. 4,

pp.27-75, 1993.

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