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.
然而，ENIAC并不是通用机，它在一个很重要的问题上，背离了巴贝奇的想法。
Babbage had been proud of the fact that the planned Analytical Engine would be able to ingest an unlimited number of instruction cards.
巴贝奇设想的分析引擎，能够接受无限数量的指令卡片。
The Aiken relay machine enjoyed the same feature, although cards had been replaced by a sort of pianola roll.
艾肯的继电器机器具有这个特性，只是将卡片换成了类似自动钢琴用的纸卷。
But on the ENIAC the state of affairs was different.
但在ENIAC中就不一样了，
Its operations, being electronic, would be so fast as to make it impossible to supply cards or tape quickly enough.
它的电子化运行速度太快了，不可能有那么快的速度给它输入卡片或纸带。
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.
工程师必须找到一种方法，让它在几百万分之一秒内取得指令。
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，他们通过一个外部设备系统，来为每项工作设定相应的指令。
It took the form of making connections with plugs as on a manual telephone exchange. (The Colossi had something very similar.)
它的形式很像手动电话系统中的插头连接，这与巨人机也很类似。
The advantage of this solution was that the instructions would in effect be available instantaneously, once the plugging work was done.
这个方法的优点是，将插头插好之后，所有的指令都可以在机器需要的时候立即取到。
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.
但它的缺点是，指令序列的长度受到了限制，而且插插头的工作需要耗时一整天。
It would be like building a new machine for each different task.
而且这种插插头的过程，显得有点像是为不同的任务改造不同的机器了。
Both ENIAC and Colossus were like kits out of which many slightly different machines could be made.
ENIAC和巨人机，都像是在为不同的任务而制造具有细微差别的不同机器，
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.
它们都没有真正实现巴贝奇的通用机概念，这种通用机在改变用途时完全不需要任何硬件改动，只需要重写指令卡片。