[jecel]

> von Neumann simply described the work of Eckert and Mauchly on the ENIAC in a written report.

Actually, it was a study group to come up with the successor to ENIAC (called EDVAC) which included Eckert, Mauchly, von Neumann, Goldstine and Burks. Von Neumann was the last to join, but wrote down the group's conclusions in a memo meant for the group. Herman Goldstine typed that up into a nice report but listed von Neumann as the sole author and distributed 24 copies to researchers. Many new copies of the report were made and circulated causing confusion about who had created the ideas.

George Dyson's "Turing's Cathedral", on the other hand, argues that von Neumann's close relationship with Gödel had a major role in getting the stored program idea adopted by the EDVAC group.