A Numerical Laboratory

Abstract

In a series of talks in 1946, John von Neumann envisioned the use of high‐speed computers to generate solutions to nonlinear problems, particularly in fluid dynamics. He pointed out that scientists were conducting expensive and difficult experiments to observe physical behavior even when the underlying principles and governing equations were known. “The purpose of the experiment is not to verify a proposed theory but to replace a computation from an unquestioned theory by direct measurements,” he wrote. “Thus wind tunnels are used at present, at least in large part, as computing devices of the so‐called analogy type to integrate the nonlinear partial differential equations of fluid dynamics.”