雙語暢銷書《艾倫圖靈傳》第7章:運轉起來(76)
Like the Colossus, the ENIAC had been designed for a specific task, that of calculating artillery range tables.
Essentially it was to simulate the trajectories of shells through varying conditions of air resistance and wind velocity, which involved the summation of thousands of little pieces of trajectory.
它在本質上模擬了炮彈在不同的氣壓和風速條件下的彈道，這涉及到成千上萬的計算項。It had external switches which would be set to store the constant parameters for a trajectory calculation, and further external devices for setting up the instructions on how to calculate the segments of motion. Then there would be valves to hold the intermediate working figures.
它配置了外部的開關，用來設定彈道計算所需的常數，還配置了其它的外部設備，用來輸入指定的指令，電子管則用來存儲計算過程中的數值。
In these arrangements it resembled the Colossi.
這些都與巨人機很像。But in both cases, people had quickly discovered the possibility for using the machines for a wider range of tasks than those for which they had been designed.
通過這兩個項目，人們很快就看到了新的前景，這些機器可以用來執行更廣泛的任務，而不僅是當初設計的那些。The role of the original Colossus had been much extended by Donald Michie and Jack Good, and then the Mark II had once been set up to punch out a deciphered message, although this was done out of interest, not for the sake of efficiency.
唐納德·米奇和傑克·古德，很大限度地擴展了原始巨人機的能力，後來的馬克II號還被用來爲破譯的信息打孔，但這只是爲了好玩，而不是爲了提高效率。Even though a parasite on the German cipher machine, the flexibility offered by its instruction table facility was such that it could even be 'almost' set up to perform numerical multiplication.
儘管它的目標是德國密碼機，但其指令表的靈活性，使它可以很輕鬆地搖身一變成爲數字乘法機。The ENIAC was flexible in a more serious way, and von Neumann had already discovered that it could be used, when ready, for Los Alamos problems.
而ENIAC則具有更加嚴格意義上的靈活性，馮·諾伊曼很快就看到，它可以用來解決洛斯阿拉莫斯實驗室的問題。
