Monroe Epic
Encyclopedia
The Monroe EPIC was a programmable calculator
that came on the market in the 1960s. It consisted of a large desktop 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 unconditional branch (GOTO) that always executed at program completion (the end of the operation stack) to return to the starting instruction of the program (looped back to beginning of operation stack). This made the creation of conditional branching logic, such as IF-THEN-ELSE, impossible.
Programmable calculator
Programmable calculators are calculators that can automatically carry out a sequence of operations under control of a stored program, much like a computer. The first programmable calculators such as the IBM CPC used punched cards or other media for program storage...
that came on the market in the 1960s. It consisted of a large desktop 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
Branch (computer science)
A branch is sequence of code in a computer program which is conditionally executed depending on whether the flow of control is altered or not . The term can be used when referring to programs in high level languages as well as program written in machine code or assembly language...
available was a hard-coded unconditional branch (GOTO) that always executed at program completion (the end of the operation stack) to return to the starting instruction of the program (looped back to beginning of operation stack). This made the creation of conditional branching logic, such as IF-THEN-ELSE, impossible.