Whenever I have pressed the case that John von Neumann should be considered the father of the modern stored-program computer ie the one that nearly everyone uses and carries around in their pockets, I've been met with hurt rebukes. These rebukes are sometimes based on scholarship (sadly, out of date) but mostly these outraged critics base their opinions on what they read on the Internet and some fairly sloppy pop histories. So let's lay out von Neumann's claim properly, as I have not seen it done elsewhere. The argument has three strands: 1. An idea 2. A principle 3. A machine