The Monroe EPIC was a
programmable calculator
Programmable calculators are calculators that can automatically carry out a sequence of operations under control of a stored program. Most are Turing complete, and, as such, are theoretically general-purpose computers. However, their user inter ...
that came on the market in the 1960s. It consisted of a large
desktop
A desktop traditionally refers to:
* The surface of a desk (often to distinguish office appliances that fit on a desk, such as photocopiers and printers, from larger equipment covering its own area on the floor)
Desktop may refer to various compu ...
unit which attached to a floor-standing logic tower and was capable of being programmed to perform many computer-like functions. However, the only form of a
branching instruction available was a
hard-coded
Hard coding (also hard-coding or hardcoding) is the software development practice of embedding data directly into the source code of a program or other executable object, as opposed to obtaining the data from external sources or generating it at ...
unconditional branch
A branch is an instruction in a computer program that can cause a computer to begin executing a different instruction sequence and thus deviate from its default behavior of executing instructions in order. ''Branch'' (or ''branching'', ''branc ...
(GOTO) that always executed at
program
Program, programme, programmer, or programming may refer to:
Business and management
* Program management, the process of managing several related projects
* Time management
* Program, a part of planning
Arts and entertainment Audio
* Progra ...
completion (the end of the operation
stack) to return to the starting instruction of the program (looped back to the beginning of operation stack). This made the creation of
conditional branching logic, such as IF-THEN-ELSE, impossible.
References
External links
Old Calculators Museum Images of the Monroe Epic
Programmable calculators
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