Colossus Computer

Colossus Computer

Colossus was the world's first electronic, digital, computer that was programmable. The Colossus computers were used by British codebreakers during World War II to help in the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher. Without them, the Allies would have been deprived of the very valuable intelligence that was obtained from reading the vast quantity of encrypted high-level telegraphic messages between the German High Command (OKW) and their army commands throughout occupied Europe. Colossus used thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) to perform Boolean operations and calculations.

Colossus was designed by engineer Tommy Flowers, to solve a problem posed by mathematician Max Newman at the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park. The prototype, Colossus Mark 1, was shown to be working in December 1943 and was operational at Bletchley Park by 5 February 1944. An improved Colossus Mark 2 first worked on 1 June 1944, just in time for the Normandy Landings. Ten Colossus computers were in use by the end of the war.

The destruction of most of the Colossus hardware and blueprints, as part of the effort to maintain a project secrecy that was kept up into the 1970's, deprived some of the Colossus creators of credit for their pioneering advancements in electronic digital computing during their lifetimes. A functioning replica of a Colossus computer was completed in 2007, and is on display at the The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park. It has sometimes been erroneously stated that Alan Turing designed Colossus to aid the Cryptanalysis of the Enigma machine. Turing's machine that helped solve Enigma, was the electromechanical Bombe, not Colossus.