Breaking Hitler's Lorenz Code - Colossus, 1943: the world's first programmable computer

A video of a fantastic tour at Bletchley Park, home of the Second World War Code Breakers, showing the method of interception and deciphering of the first teleprinter signals in Lorenz code, and how the need to speed the process up resulted in the development of the world's first programmable electronic computer.

I would strongly recommend a visit to Bletchley Park, Milton Keynes, UK. Take a whole day if you can as there is a lot to see. All the staff, the tour and guide and displays were outstanding.

[walterkronkitesleftshoe]

At the end of the war Tommy Flowers (the creator of COLOSSUS) was personally awarded £1000 by the UK government for his pioneering work on the machine. This amount of money sadly did not cover the amount of money he had already personally invested in the machine's construction, but inspite of that fact he was such a good & decent man that he divided the money up amongst the team who had helped him. In the end, he was left with around £350. This was a decent amount of money for 1945 but not a huge amount for the man credited with inventing the modern electronic computer, and the saving of countless thousands of lives. It's hard to believe that Tommy would later apply for a loan from the Bank of England to build a privately funded version of "Colossus". His loan application was turned down as the bank refused to believe that his machine would work, because of the official secrets act they were unaware that he had already overseen the construction of 10 such machines during WW2.

He was not allowed to speak about his work for decades after the war, and had to look on silently when the US announced that it had built the world's first electronic programmable computer in 1947... 3 years after Tommy had "COLOSSUS" up and running .

Unfortunately for his "public profile" he wasn't a persecuted upper middle class homosexual. Then again I have the feeling that Mr Flowers was an understated quiet gentleman who didn't seek the limelight, in much the same was as Mr Turing. There were also many MANY others who received no recognition for their efforts, such as Bill Tutte, Gordon Welchman, John Tiltman & Max Newman to name but a few.

[MrDaiseymay]

For me, collossus it is STILL, an OVERWHELMING sight. What an impression it must have made in the 1940's. The Americans were stunned when they where told that Their first Computer had been two years behind Collossus.

[michaelhawthorne]

The circuit diagram to rebuild Colossus must have been
Great Tut and Turing...(and the rest of the code breakers)...because of National security, didn't, at the time get their just recognition....
I must go back to Bletchley to see the things I missed.

[sidr]

what an absolutely beautiful machine that impressive and complex as words don’t even begin to encompass. really wish there was some way online to fully simulate and understand this machine and track bits as they progress through the tape. an absolute marvel comparable to the pyramids

[davidtuer]

There is another video on Colossus on you tube given by Chris Shore of the Centre for Computing History. Just enter Colossus in search. It is much more detailed and, actually, much more interesting with the names of the Mathematicians and Engineers who were responsible. It's also very clear.

[cigmorfil]

Bet the student wasn't limited by the speed of the tape - Colossus ran at whatever speed the tape ran at (it used the sprocket holes as the clock to synchronise the whole machine). As a test Tommy Flowers cranked up the paper tape drive: at 9, 600 cps the tape broke and flew across the room at 60 mph, so 5, 000 cps was decided as a safe speed. I wonder how fast Colossus could have run before the valves were too slow to switch in time if an indestructible tape could have been made.

[Zurenio]

What about the uk machines enigma version ....?

[rysacroft]

I wish someone had miked him up, the sound quality is awful :(

[paulcrumley]

Area mike is a very poor sound source in this room. Very hard to understand him at times.

[danielmorris]

The acoustical characteristics of the room militate against the speaker's voice, thereby making him hard to understand. A different type of microphone might have made this video intelligible. As it is, thumbs down!

[ElegantSolutions]

Why didn't they have the good sense to give this guy a microphone? It's unintelligible.