The Relation between Babbage and von Neumann
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.”