Colossus at Bletchley Park
Colossus, the electronic code-breaking machine built in 1943–44 to attack the German Lorenz cipher.
Colossus was the first programmable electronic digital computer, built by Post Office engineer Tommy Flowers to speed up the attack on the Lorenz teleprinter cipher used for German high command traffic. Ten machines were operating by the end of the war. Nearly all were destroyed afterwards and the work stayed secret for thirty years, which is why the history of computing was written without them. Read the full story in our article on Wartime Codes and Enigma: Alan Turing’s Cryptographic Breakthrough at Bletchley Park.
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