The Petrified Forest: Ashton: Sawtooth Tavern

Fundamental to the concept of the general-purpose digital computer was its adaptability to a wide variety of computing tasks. The instrument of that flexibility was the program, whereby the capabilities of the machine were marshaled and orchestrated to accomplish a specific purpose: the processing of a specific set of data to produce a new and more useful set. — Charles J. Bashe, Lyle R. Johnson, John H. Palmer, and Emerson W. Pugh (IBM’s Early Computers^•)