alt Hacker NewsIt doesn’t resemble the computers of today, but none the less it was indeed a stored program digital computer. The first of its kind. The bombes were more akin to a special purpose calculation machine. Colossus was something a bit more special.
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riazrizvi • today at 4:36 PM
It was the first programmable electronic digital computing machine, yes. Special-purpose computing machines had been around since the 1600's (where they were used as textile weaving machines I think).
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‘Stored program’ is where the debate is. Colossus was ‘programmable’ but the program was not a series of instructions executed in a sequence - it was a single data process executed on the input data against a set of stored registers.
Definitely programmable, definitely capable of computing, but not a ‘stored program’ in the sense we know it today.