Answer:
They Were Used As Calculators But You Had To Rewire Them Every Time You Had To Add Or Subtract.
Added:
I don't know about the rewiring, but crashing and having to reboot the mainframe was a regular occurrence.
Computers were used as word processors, replacing typewriters for many uses. At newspapers such as the one where I began working in 1979, news stories were written and edited in the computer, then the type was formatted, printed on a paper similar to photograph paper, and laid out on a page. Computer layout and pagination was in the future.
When we were married in 1984, my husband had a simple home computer on which he spent hours playing some kind of game. I don't know what game, but it involved a lot of coding.