How did computers take over the world? This is the story of how the PC, iPod, smartphone, and nearly every aspect of modern life came to be. In 1945, a small group of brilliant engineers and mathematicians gathered at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, determined to build a computer that would make Alan Turing's theory of a "universal machine" a reality. Led by the versatile émigré John von Neumann, they created the numerical framework that underlies nearly all modern computing systems and ensured that the world would never be the same again.