Yes I totally agree. I must say that on this point, I lean heavily in my book on 'ENIAC in Action' by Haigh and colleagues. But as I was writing it became clear to me that von Neumann was uniquely well positioned to help birth the modern computer. So you have his work on mathematical logic during the foundational crisis, the fact that he nearly anticipated Godel, he wrote a reference for Turing then worked down the hall from him and read 'On Computable Numbers'-and understood it!

But then he was practical minded enough to care about programming and engineering and the messy stuff. And enough of a visionary to understand the computer's potential (for science at least, don't think he predicted Facebook):

>I think it is soberly true to say that the existence of such a computer would open up to mathematicians, physicists, and other scholars areas of knowledge in the same remarkable way that the two- hundred- inch telescope promises to bring under observation universes which are at present entirely outside the range of any instrument now existing.

-von Neumann

And yes, he was apparently a brilliant manager. He kept the chief engineer of the IAS computer, Julian Bigelow, and Herman Goldstine, the director of the project, from falling out.

>He kept Herman and I from fighting by some marvellous technique,’ Bigelow remembered. ‘We got along like oil and water, or cat and dog; and von Neumann would keep this here, and this there, and smooth things over.’

Finally, von Neumann had proved his usefulness to the US government and military-a role he embraced. By the end of WWII, he was taken seriously enough that the military was willing to pay most of the costs for building his computer at the IAS--AND he managed to convince them that everything - all details of the project- should be in the public domain! This to me is remarkable--I argue that makes him the sort of godfather of the open source movement.

Then he got the rest of the money from the IAS--because they didn't want to lose their academic superstar!

So he combined all these incredible traits in a way that no one else I know of really did.