The big advantage of electronic machines was speed. Early* digital computers didn't have much more memory than the card processors (64-128 bytes), but they were

The big advantage of electronic machines was speed. Early* digital computers didn't have much more memory than the card processors (64-128 bytes), but they weren't limited to cards/minute. For 150 cards/min, see http://www.righto.com/2017/11/identifying-early-ibm-computer-in.html http://www.righto.com/2017/11/identifying-early-ibm-computer... * EDIT: like ENIAC early. By MANIAC they already had ~5K of memory, which would've been unthinkable with the dieselpunk registers used by card machines: https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-k0YcX-Qhvrw/WfxzfKNG1wI/AAAAAAABF6E/Q-DWOE7swbgauUIsySorRr0tCa-568E2ACHMYBhgL/w9999/counter.jpg https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-k0YcX-Qhvrw/WfxzfKNG1wI/A...