this post was submitted on 18 Jan 2024
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This is the best summary I could come up with:
On Thursday, the UK's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) announced the release of previously unseen images and documents related to Colossus, one of the first digital computers.
These 2-meter-tall electronic beasts played an instrumental role in breaking the Lorenz cipher, a code used for communications between high-ranking German officials in occupied Europe.
Tommy Flowers, the engineer behind its construction, used over 2,500 vacuum tubes to create logic gates, a precursor to the semiconductor-based electronic circuits found in modern computers.
The GCHQ's public sharing of archival documents includes several photos of the computer at different periods and a letter discussing Tommy Flowers' groundbreaking work that references the interception of "rather alarming German instructions."
After starting work on a rebuilding project in the 1990s, engineer Tony Sale completed a 90 percent operational reconstruction of a Colossus Mark 2 in 2007 that is now displayed at the National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park.
Andrew Herbert, chairman of trustees at The National Museum of Computing, told the GCHQ that Colossus was a key part of the Allies' success during World War II.
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