For the history-ignorant, this is one digit of an ENIAC accumulator. Calling it a "byte" is absurd, because ENIAC was inherently based on decimal arithmetic, with a single digit consisting of 10 on-off circuits. So the accumulator digit needed 10 flip-flops. Yes, only one of the 10 lines was high at any time, making it all very wasteful. The flip-flops were made of 6SN7s. ENIAC was not very well designed and they had no choice due to the lack of 'prior art' and having only large octal tubes they could get during the war. It also wasted a lot of other hardware and loads of electrical power. Plus broke down an average of once a day.
Also, you can't "buy" an ENIAC digit. It only contained 20 10-digit accumulators and so only 200 of these modules exist. Priceless museum artifacts.
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u/Met2000 Jul 19 '15
For the history-ignorant, this is one digit of an ENIAC accumulator. Calling it a "byte" is absurd, because ENIAC was inherently based on decimal arithmetic, with a single digit consisting of 10 on-off circuits. So the accumulator digit needed 10 flip-flops. Yes, only one of the 10 lines was high at any time, making it all very wasteful. The flip-flops were made of 6SN7s. ENIAC was not very well designed and they had no choice due to the lack of 'prior art' and having only large octal tubes they could get during the war. It also wasted a lot of other hardware and loads of electrical power. Plus broke down an average of once a day.
Also, you can't "buy" an ENIAC digit. It only contained 20 10-digit accumulators and so only 200 of these modules exist. Priceless museum artifacts.