IP: The Colossus

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Date: Wed, 9 Oct 1996 11:02:57 +0100
To: farber () central cis upenn edu
From: Brian.Randell () newcastle ac uk (Brian Randell)


Dave:


On Monday we had a splendid lecture here by Tony Sale
<tsale () qufaro demon co uk>, who runs the Cryptology Museum at Bletchley
Park, and who has recreated a working Colossus there. His talk (illustrated
with transparencies, slides and a video) gave far more detail about the
breaking of the Lorenz ("Fish") code than I've ever heard or seen before,
thanks to  wartime documents recently released by NASA under the US Freedom
of Information Act.


He will be repeating the lecture later this year at NSA, and later this
month in London - see attached notice. (Anyone wanting to go to the London
lecture should book (by phone!).)


You can visit the Park at http://www.cranfield.ac.uk/CCC/BPark/, but I'd
strongly recommend going there in person. Seeing a totally realistic
Colossus actually running - which I did on 6 June last when I was there for
the official switching on ceremony by the Duke of Kent - is truly awesome.


Cheers


Brian Randell


=========


The British Computer Society and the National Museum of Science and Industry


               THE COMPUTER CONSERVATION SOCIETY


      The COLOSSUS Code-Breaker and the Colossus Rebuild


                         Tony Sale
            Museums Director, Bletchley Park Trust


         A lecture on Thursday 31 October 1996, 2.0 pm


         Director's Suite, Science Museum, London SW7
                   (See directions below)


The Colossus code-breaking machine, designed and built during World War II,
played a vital role in deciphering German High command message traffic.
This in turn made a key contribution to frustrating enemy plans, and some
would say to the outcome of the war itself. Unhappily, successive post-war
governments, sensitive to the security implications of Britain's
code-breaking effort, have refused to release information about Bletchley
Park or Colossus. Winston Churchill is said to have ordered that the 10
Colossus machines in operation at the end of the war should be broken up
into pieces no larger than a man's hand. And it was to be 30 years after
the commissioning of Colossus in 1943 before there was any official
acknowledgement that the machine had ever existed.


Colossus can be claimed as the World's first working electronic computer,
significantly predating the American ENIAC. To rebuild it in the 1990s
might be thought impossible. Fortunately, Tony Sale, founder hon secretary
of the Computer Conservation Society and Museums Director of the Bletchley
Park Trust, saw things differently. He started the rebuild project three
years ago, and a working replica of Colossus became operational at
Bletchley Park earlier this year. His lecture will trace how Colossus came
to be designed, the performance of the rebuilt machine and the place of
Colossus in the history of computing.


For the Director's Suite, use the Museum North entrance next to the old
Post Office, a few yards north of the main entrance in Exhibition Road.


Queries to:        Chris Hipwell 01825 722567


Please show this notice to obtain admission




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