Colossus - The Greatest Secret in the History of Computing

[GDeSantis]

Colossus, the world's first electronic computer, went into operation in 1944 at Britain's wartime code-breaking headquarters at Bletchley Park.  It had a single purpose: to help decipher messages between Hitler and his generals during World War II.

This is an incredible story and is beautifully told.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g2tMcMQqSbA

[charliecoutas]

If I might respectfully correct Chris Shore (who presented the video), Tommy Flowers did see the working rebuild of Colossus.
See https://www.codesandciphers.org.uk/lorenz/rebuild.htm

This was 6th June 1966; the Duke of Kent was also present.

As you say, an incredible story.

[top204]

Tommy Flowers is one of the people I truly admire.

The people who re-built Colossus and told the truth of what the stupid UK govermnemt did with it after the war are also on my admire list, and they "literally" re-wrote history. But a bit too late for poor Tommy to gain and enjoy what he had lost. :-(

He is the one who should have had films and documentaries made about his endeavours during the 1940s, and his dissapointments after it, along with the other genius' (male and female) at Bletchley.

[See_Mos]

It's an amazing story well presented.  I have several books about Bletchley and Colossus and I have read the theory a few times but most of it still won't sink in.

Tommy Flowers deserved at least some recognition during his lifetime

[JonW]

Its Bill Tutte who impresses the heck out of me.  4000 characters he worked out how the encryption machine worked.  Seriously impressive feat

[charliecoutas]

I have written a paper about how the Lorenz cipher was broken (which led to Colossus). You might find it interesting. Can I put it on the forum somehow?

Charlie

[top204]

I look forward to reading that Charlie. You can attach a PDF to a post.

I too had forgotten about Bill Tutte (sorry Bill) until he was mentioned in your post Jon, and I remember reading somewhere that his genius in finding the way the mechanism worked by looking at the sequences inspired Tommy and his colleagues to create a machine that had been floating around in Tommy's head for a while that could do the work in a shorter time instead of days or weeks or months, where it would not be of any use because what was in the cypher had already occured because it took so long to de-cypher.

True geniuses that actually changed history, and now, sadly, forgotten in history.

[charliecoutas]

Thanks Les, I think I have attached it. I wrote it because I couldn't understand most of the maths in the definitive work "Breaking Teleprinter Codes Using Statistical Methods". This is a big book written by some of the cryptographers at Bletchley Park when the war was over.

Best regards to all
Charlie