Unsung heroes of IT: The story of Bill Tutte and Tommy Flowers

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Paul Davey <ip () pdc co uk>
Date: February 9, 2010 6:49:32 PM EST
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: Unsung heroes of IT: The story of Bill Tutte and Tommy Flowers

Hi Dave,

You may like this for IP. 

Ian Grant has a very interesting piece on two computing pioneers in the UK publication Computer Weekly, also available 
online.

I'd heard of Tommy Flowers' role in building Collosus, but not of the work of Bill Tutte in breaking the 
Lorenz cipher.

A few snippets ...

Jerry Roberts, the last surviving member of the Testery, part of Bletchley Park's code-breaking has embarked on a 
campaign to publicise their work.

"Bill Tutte was a most astonishingly brilliant man," says Roberts. "He was a 24-year-old mathematician, and by sheer 
iron logic he worked out how the [German high command's Lorenz cipher] system worked. "When you consider there were 
three levels of encryption, it was an extraordinary performance," he says. "It has even been called the outstanding 
mental feat of the last century."

... An initial machine, which is currently being rebuilt by the National Museum of Computing, the (Heath) Robinson*, 
proved unreliable because the paper tape it used to input data broke often... Flowers proposed, to great scepticism, a 
machine that could replicate the Lorenz in electronic format. He was given two years to develop the device.

..Flowers invented a way for Colossus to count up to five simultaneous data streams. This is believed to be the first 
instance of parallel processing by machine.

Tutte and Flowers both died with their secrets untold and largely uncelebrated.


*Note to US readers - A Heath Robinson contraption is the UK equivalent of a Rube Goldberg device.


The hard copy story is split into five or so sections - follow the links after the first block of text  (I also copied 
them below)

The article starts at this link:   Unsung heroes of IT: The story of Bill Tutte and Tommy Flowers

    Breaking the World War 2 German encryption codes >>

    Code Breaker Secrets >>

    Colossus: The first programmable computer >>

    How the Lorenz machine worked >>

--

  kind regards,
     Paul





-------------------------------------------
Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now
RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com