In Fred Hoyle’s science fiction novel, The Black Cloud, there is a computer in an early chapter that is clearly inspired by EDSAC. When they run a program on it, the process is just what you describe - they load a paper tape in through the tape reader, which Hoyle describes in detail.

I first read that book before I knew that in British English a vacuum tube is called a valve (from thermionic valve and which makes more sense than the American term, I think), so I was confused by the line about how warm the room was due to all of the valves!

We called them thermionic valves too, just the terminology shifted a bit over time. We also called capacitors "condensers". Both were references to steam powered control systems.