What, In Contrast, Was the Operating Principle of the ENIAC?
According to Martin Davis, Professor Emeritus, Department of Computer Science Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences New York University, described here as one of the greatest living mathematicians and computer scientists, and who is interviewed here, in his book Engines of Logic: Mathematicians and the Origin of the Computer, in Chapter 8, page 181, here’s how ENIAC worked: An enormous machine, occupying a large room, and programmed by connecting cables to a plugboard rather like an old-fashioned telephone switchboard, the ENIAC was modeled on the most successful computing machines then available — differential analyzers. Differential analyzers were not digital devices operating on numbers digit by digit. Rather numbers were represented by physical quantities that could be measured (like electric currents or voltages) and components were linked together to emulate the desired mathematical operations. These analog machines were limited in their accuracy by that of the instruments
