From an authoritative source -- 60-year-old computer loses race

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brian Randell <Brian.Randell () ncl ac uk>
Date: November 19, 2007 8:51:22 AM EST
To: Charles Pinneo <pinneo () sbcglobal net>
Cc: dave () farber net
Subject: Re: [IP] Re:   60-year-old computer loses race

Charlie:

> What's interesting to me about Colossus is how the English see the  
> history of computers in a different light than Americans see it due  
> to national chauvinistic rationalizations and also as affected by  
> how you define "computer."  For example, Americans who don't know  
> much about computer history, might see Univac as the first computer,  
> whereas the British might see Colossus as the first computer. Or the  
> French might place more importance on Jacquard's Punched Cards. It's  
> all how you look at it from a nationalistic point of view.

Aside from nationalism, the way I put it is that if you add enough  
adjectives, anything can be identified as "first". (And issues of  
primacy are not really as important as issues of influence.)

FWIW, to my mind the first operational practical electronic stored  
program computer was the Cambridge EDSAC - 1949

If you remove "practical" you identify the Manchester machine built to  
test the Williams tube memory, which worked first in 1948.

Then remove "stored program" and you get into arguments about degree  
of programmability, and in particular between ENIAC (1946) and  
Colossus (1943/4)

Then remove electronic and you get back to Zuse

Then also remove operational and you get to Babbage - my other great  
hero.

:-)

The situation with regard to the Colossus is complicated by issues of  
secrecy. I broke the first reasonably detailed news of the Colossus in  
the 1970s, after nearly 30 years of everyone assuming that the ENIAC  
was the first electronic computer. But now in Britain at least its  
fame is bound up with that of Bletchley Park, Alan Turing and  
(confusingly) Enigma.

The recent publicity has been engineered as part of a campaign to  
obtain funding for a museum at Bletchley Park.

> In view of history, though, Colossus is far more important because  
> if Colossus hadn't been used at Bletchley Park to defeat the  
> Germans, we would all be speaking German.

Agreed, though that's a bit of an overstatement - I think military  
historians now accept that the work at Bletchley Park shortened the  
war by a couple of years - which of course is a fantastic achievement,  
and to have kept it all completely under wraps for 30 years is amazing.

> Has the rebuilding of Colossus sparked more interest in the history  
> of computing in England?

Certainly there's been quite a bit of publicity, but perhaps the  
general interest is more related to code-breaking than to computing.

> I found this really neat YouTube movie clip about the rebuilding of  
> Colossus. I'm sure you've seen it.

I hadn't - thanks for the heads-up.

> I read The Second World War by Winston Churchill. I mailed it to my  
> brother in Arizona and then he mailed it to my nephew (his son) in  
> Florida. It's making the rounds in our family.

I don't get to spend much time on matters to do with computer history  
these days, but I count my publicising of Tommy Flowers' work on  
Colossus, and getting this University to award him an honorary  
doctorate as perhaps my proudest achievement, and my getting to see  
the cache of Babbage papers, including his fantastic unpublished 1837  
manuscript "On the Mathematical Powers of the Calculating Engine", at  
the Oxford Museum of the History of Science, as one of my most  
exciting moments.

cheers

Brian

--
School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne,
NE1 7RU, UK
EMAIL = Brian.Randell () ncl ac uk   PHONE = +44 191 222 7923
FAX = +44 191 222 8232  URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/~brian.randell/


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