From http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/CDMTCS/chaitin/lowell.html

The computer pioneer Turing was inspired by these questions. Turing was trying to settle a question of Hilbert's having to do with the philosophy of mathematics, when he invented a thing called the Turing machine, which is a mathematical model of a toy computer. Turing did this before there were any real computers, and then he went on to actually build computers. The first computers in England were built by Turing.

And von Neumann, who was instrumental in encouraging the creation of computers as a technology in the United States, (unfortunately as part of a war effort, as part of the effort to build the atom bomb), he knew Turing's work very well. I learned of Turing by reading von Neumann talking about the importance of Turing's work.