IMG_1451
Bletchley Park Visit – 11th April 2015.
Colossus was the world's first programmable, electronic, digital computer. The Colossus computers were developed for British codebreakers during World War II to help in the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher. Without them, the Allies would have been deprived of the very valuable military intelligence that was obtained from reading the vast quantity of encrypted high-level telegraphic messages between the German High Command (OKW) and their army commands throughout occupied Europe. Colossus used thermionic valves (vacuum tubes and thyratrons) to perform Boolean operations and calculations.
Colossus was designed by the engineer Tommy Flowers to solve a problem posed by mathematician Max Newman at the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park. Alan Turing's use of probability in cryptanalysis[1] contributed to its design. It has sometimes been erroneously stated that Turing designed Colossus to aid the Cryptanalysis of the Enigma. Turing's machine that helped decode Enigma was the electromechanical Bombe, not Colossus.
Bletchley Park, near Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire England, was Britain’s Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), which during the Second World War regularly penetrated the secret communications of the Axis Powers – most importantly, that of the German Enigma and Lorenz ciphers.
Alan Turing was one of the famous analysts at Bletchley, and he famously designed the Bombe to help break the German codes, and was portrayed within the film ‘Imitation Game’ by Benedict Cumberbatch.
IMG_1451
Bletchley Park Visit – 11th April 2015.
Colossus was the world's first programmable, electronic, digital computer. The Colossus computers were developed for British codebreakers during World War II to help in the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher. Without them, the Allies would have been deprived of the very valuable military intelligence that was obtained from reading the vast quantity of encrypted high-level telegraphic messages between the German High Command (OKW) and their army commands throughout occupied Europe. Colossus used thermionic valves (vacuum tubes and thyratrons) to perform Boolean operations and calculations.
Colossus was designed by the engineer Tommy Flowers to solve a problem posed by mathematician Max Newman at the Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS) at Bletchley Park. Alan Turing's use of probability in cryptanalysis[1] contributed to its design. It has sometimes been erroneously stated that Turing designed Colossus to aid the Cryptanalysis of the Enigma. Turing's machine that helped decode Enigma was the electromechanical Bombe, not Colossus.
Bletchley Park, near Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire England, was Britain’s Government Code and Cypher School (GC&CS), which during the Second World War regularly penetrated the secret communications of the Axis Powers – most importantly, that of the German Enigma and Lorenz ciphers.
Alan Turing was one of the famous analysts at Bletchley, and he famously designed the Bombe to help break the German codes, and was portrayed within the film ‘Imitation Game’ by Benedict Cumberbatch.