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from the cracking-the-code-with-friction-valves-and-pulleys dept.
GCHQ has released never before seen images of Colossus, the UK's secret code-breaking computer credited with helping the Allies win World War Two:
The intelligence agency is publishing them to mark the 80th anniversary of the device's invention.
It says they "shed new light" on the "genesis and workings of Colossus", which is considered by many to be the first digital computer.
Its existence was kept largely secret until the early 2000s.
[...] The first Colossus began operating from Bletchley Park, the home of the UK's codebreakers, in early 1944. By the end of the war there were 10 computers helping to decipher the Nazi messages.
Fitted with 2,500 valves and standing at more than 2 metres tall, Colossus required a team of skilled operators and technicians to run and maintain it.
[...] Blueprints of its inner workings have also been made public for the first time, along with a letter referring to "rather alarming German instructions" intercepted by Colossus, as well as an audio clip of the machine at work.
Originally spotted on Herbert Bruderer's blog.
Related: Cryptography is the Bombe: Britain's Enigma-Cracker on Display in New Home
(Score: 2) by Whoever on Monday January 29 2024, @02:58PM
Official history is that the machines themselves and the plans were destroyed. I think this was highly unlikely. The UK wanted other countries (allies and otherwise) to think that the encryption systems that the Germans developed were unbreakable. Then the UK could spy on allies and others. It's possible that the original Colossus machines were destroyed and better machines were constructed in secret.