Remembering Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer

**snakeair** · Share | #1 (**permalink**) 03-08-2012, 04:02 PM

Very interesting blog post and lot's of new information to be learned.

Quote:

It’s no secret we have a special fondness for Bletchley Park. The pioneering work carried out there didn’t just crack codes—it laid the foundations for the computer age.

Today, we’d like to pay homage to a lesser-known contributor—Tommy Flowers. Bletchley Park’s breakthroughs were the product of theoretical mathematical brilliance combined with dazzling feats of engineering—none more so than Flowers’ creation of Colossus, the world’s first programmable, electronic computer.

By 1942 the hardest task facing Bletchley Park’s wartime codebreakers was deciphering messages encrypted by Lorenz, used by...

Continued at: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2012/...lds-first.html

I don't even know if i learned this stuff in school but if they did teach it, i was sleeping in class. lol

**ScriptMan** · #2 (**permalink**) 03-08-2012, 04:32 PM

I may have to try and work in a side trip to see that rascal.

Like you, I don't think I ever saw images of it before. I think the ones I saw as a child were early IBM main-frames; and those were only pictures in popular science or popular mechanics magazines.

**snakeair** · #3 (**permalink**) 03-08-2012, 04:34 PM

I don't know why but this blog post got me thinking about this movie we had to watch in highschool history class.

Old computers. lol

+ YouTube Video

**Bob Barr** · #4 (**permalink**) 03-08-2012, 08:07 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by snakeair

I don't even know if i learned this stuff in school but if they did teach it, i was sleeping in class. lol

With the secrecy involved in code-breaking efforts, even after the war ended, I don't think that anybody learned about this in school. BTW, the video at the link is a great one. (The observations of the people directly involved at the time are incredible.)