But how useful would a mechanical general-purpose digital computer have been? Even if a competent project manager had been in charge, steam-driven mechanical c

But how useful would a mechanical general-purpose digital computer have been? Even if a competent project manager had been in charge, steam-driven mechanical computers would have been extremely expensive, physically large, and very slow. Most of the time, I’d expect special-purpose devices would have been more cost-effective. The technologies to build electronic computers didn’t exist for another half-century at least.