🚀 go-pugleaf

webber@porthos.rutgers.edu (Bob Webber) writes:
>Actually the ENIAC is quite fascinating to simulate.  It has the most important
>feature a computer can have -- a neon bulb for each flip flop.

Nope, the most important feature is that found in the Sperry NAVDAC, used
on Polaris submarines once upon a time.  That machine used gas-discharge
triodes for its accumulator, so the lights you saw WERE the register.  Not
only did you have less propagation delay, since the lights didn't have
to be connected to the flip-flops with wires, the lights were also a
very pretty color of blue.

-- 
Michael J. Farren             | "INVESTIGATE your point of view, don't just 
{ucbvax, uunet, hoptoad}!     | dogmatize it!  Reflect on it and re-evaluate
        unisoft!gethen!farren | it.  You may want to change your mind someday."
gethen!farren@lll-winken.llnl.gov ----- Tom Reingold, from alt.flame