Why not try a plugboard?

In recent years, a very large proportion of the man-hours expended in designing and constructing new digital computers has been devoted to machines that are "internally programmed." By "internally programmed" we mean a machine in which all of the instructions and operands are contained interchangeably in storage. In contrast, we may consider an "externally programmed" machine as one in which operands and a bare minimum of instructions for subroutine control are contained in storage and the bulk of the instructions are wired into plugboards. The net result of the emphasis on internally programmed computers has been that many of the computing fraternity seem to be accepting the belief that this is the only kind of machine to use for computing. To illustrate the extent to which this belief has gone, in the "First Glossary of Programming Terminology" issued for the Association for Computing Machinery, the word "plugboard" is not even listed. It is merely mentioned under the heading of "storage" as a device that holds information, but its use as a simple and very powerful means of replacing coded instructions certainly has not been emphasized. This is perhaps true because the only externally programmed machines available are combinations of accounting machines and cannot really be considered as computers. To date, with one exception, no large plugboard machine properly designed from the beginning as a computer has been available.