Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe

by George Dyson

The establishment of the dual Austro-Hungarian monarchy in 1867 had brought an interlude of peace and prosperity, and a lifting of restrictions against Jews, to a country best known, according to Klári von Neumann, “for the gallantry of its men, the beauty of its women, and last, but not least, for its hopelessly unhappy and unlucky history.”1 When the towns of Buda and Pest, on opposite sides of the Danube, were amalgamated in 1873, the new Hungarian capital, now rivaling Vienna as the cultural and economic center of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, became the fastest-growing city in Europe. There were more than six hundred coffeehouses, three of the world’s most rigorous high schools, and the first subway system on the European continent in young Neumann János’s Budapest.