The Relation between Babbage and von Neumann It is well known that Charles Babbage's analytical machine had an architecture strongly ressembling the modern Von Neumann architecture.

Also, it's notable that the tables for representing a program for Babbage's analytical machine ( http://www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/figures/menat3.png ) and von Neumann's work (such as http://library.ias.edu/files/pdfs/ecp/planningcodingof0103inst.pdf ) are quite analogous.

Now I'm wondering if there's any indication to what extent von Neumann knew of the work done by Babbage, and if he used it as an inspiration for his own work.
In their 2003 paper Lovelace &amp; Babbage and the Creation of the 1843 ‘Notes', John Fuegi and Jo Francis quote H.J. Gray’s Digital Computer Engineering, Prentice-Hall, 1963, in the annoted bibliography given by B. Randell, ed., The Origins of Digital Computers: Selected Papers, Springer Verlag, 1973, p. 420, as saying:


  “John von Neumann urged that all the machine units be connected ... so
  that the machine could be used as a computer of the Babbage type ...
  This was done and ENIAC was operated in this fashion until it
  retired.”