We've come to talk about the Von Neumann architecture, but the information contained in his report on the EDVAC was largely lifted from the work of John Mauchly and Presper Eckert. Von Neumann's contribution was the relatively pedestrian task of translating their findings into mathematical language. He inappropriately put it into the public domain without attribution simultaneously diminishing their place in history while unjustly cementing his. Not to mention, he destroyed their chances of earning a patent. It's a real shame that we tend to gloss over this nowadays for expedience's sake.
For more on this, I recommend "Eniac: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer" by Scott McCartney. I read it a few years ago and found it fascinating. I don't remember how much it gets into Zuse, but it has a lot about the Eniac vs Atanasoff battle, and von Neumann and the Preliminary Report on EDVAC. These things are never black and white. All of these people did valuable work.
Well, Eckert and Mauchley went on to form the Eckert-Mauchley Computer Corporation and produce the UNIVAC I. That company became UNIVAC, later Unisys, and is still around.
