雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第7章:運轉起來(77)
But the ENIAC had not been conceived as a universal machine, and in one important respect the designers had departed from Babbage's line of development.
Babbage had been proud of the fact that the planned Analytical Engine would be able to ingest an unlimited number of instruction cards.
巴貝奇設想的分析引擎，能夠接受無限數量的指令卡片。The Aiken relay machine enjoyed the same feature, although cards had been replaced by a sort of pianola roll.
艾肯的繼電器機器具有這個特性，只是將卡片換成了類似自動鋼琴用的紙卷。
But on the ENIAC the state of affairs was different.
但在ENIAC中就不一樣了，Its operations, being electronic, would be so fast as to make it impossible to supply cards or tape quickly enough.
它的電子化運行速度太快了，不可能有那麼快的速度給它輸入卡片或紙帶。The engineers had had to find a way to make the instructions available to the machine in electronic times of a few millionths of a second.
工程師必須找到一種方法，讓它在幾百萬分之一秒內取得指令。On the ENIAC they were arranging for this by a system of external devices which would set up the instructions for each job.
在ENIAC上，他們通過一個外部設備系統，來爲每項工作設定相應的指令。It took the form of making connections with plugs as on a manual telephone exchange. (The Colossi had something very similar.)
它的形式很像手動電話系統中的插頭連接，這與巨人機也很類似。The advantage of this solution was that the instructions would in effect be available instantaneously, once the plugging work was done.
這個方法的優點是，將插頭插好之後，所有的指令都可以在機器需要的時候立即取到。The disadvantage was that the sequence of instructions was limited in length, and that it would take a day or so to do the plugging.
但它的缺點是，指令序列的長度受到了限制，而且插插頭的工作需要耗時一整天。It would be like building a new machine for each different task.
而且這種插插頭的過程，顯得有點像是爲不同的任務改造不同的機器了。Both ENIAC and Colossus were like kits out of which many slightly different machines could be made.
ENIAC和巨人機，都像是在爲不同的任務而製造具有細微差別的不同機器，Neither sought to embody the true universality of Babbage's conception, in which the machinery would be entirely unchanged, and only the instruction cards rewritten.
它們都沒有真正實現巴貝奇的通用機概念，這種通用機在改變用途時完全不需要任何硬件改動，只需要重寫指令卡片。
