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adrian_btoday at 10:40 AM1 replyview on HN

The shortened title is very incorrect.

What the article says is different: "the first large-scale, general-purpose, programmable electronic digital computer".

The claim of the article can be considered correct, and "electronic" is a part that cannot be deleted from it without falsifying the claim.

Before ENIAC, there have been digital computers that were much more general-purpose, because they run programs written on punched tape, instead of requiring a rewiring like ENIAC.

ENIAC, which evolved from the analog computers known as differential analyzers, had a structure closer to an FPGA than to a modern digital computer.

In contrast, an earlier relay computer like Harvard Mark I was intended as a successor of the mechanical digital computer designed by Charles Babbage, so it already had the same structure with a modern digital computer, except that it used different kind of memories for data and for programs, hence the name "Harvard architecture". The same was true for the Zuse computer.

The earlier ABC digital computer was electronic, but it can be considered as special-purpose, not general-purpose. The first relay computers at Bell Labs may also be considered as special purpose.


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mrobtoday at 11:00 AM

In this context, "general purpose" means "Turing complete" in the informal sense of handwaving away the requirement for infinite storage space.

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