Why Are Computer Storage Units Called 'Memory'?

Why are storage units in computers called "memory"? It might seem natural today, but the anthropomorphism does seem odd after a bit of thought. As many concepts in computing, this is attributable to von Neumann. A short thread on the history of this naming. 1/5 #computinghistory

— Sujith Jay Nair (@suj1th) January 11, 2020

UPenn Electrical Engg. Department had designed & built ENIAC, the first programmable electronic computer, between 1943-1945. This team roped in von Neumann to help design a successor to ENIAC. The first output of this collaboration was "First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC". 2/5

— Sujith Jay Nair (@suj1th) January 11, 2020

In the year (1944-45) that von Neumann was working on the "First Draft", he was introduced to a 1943 paper by McCulloch & Pitts called "A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity". It described the similarities between mathematical logic & neural networks. 3/5

— Sujith Jay Nair (@suj1th) January 11, 2020

The paper's idea of the seeming similarity between digital control circuits & the operations of the biological nervous system background is supposed to have inspired von Neumann's use of biological language in the "First Draft". 4/5

— Sujith Jay Nair (@suj1th) January 11, 2020

Components in EDVAC were called "organs", and the storage of the first 'stored-program' computer was christened "memory". The use of the name "memory" to refer to computer storage stuck, while the use of "organs" & other such terms faded into oblivion. 5/5

— Sujith Jay Nair (@suj1th) January 11, 2020