The computer that helped win World War II
Article excerpt
One summer day in 1941, a British radio operator was monitoring German military frequencies and heard something unexpected in her headphones. A later report called it “strange new music.” Sounding unlike the familiar Morse dit-dit-dah of enciphered messages sent over the German Enigma network, the “new music” was a rhythmic warble of binary teletype code being transmitted at […]
One summer day in 1941, a British radio operator was monitoring German military frequencies and heard something unexpected in her headphones. A later report called it “strange new music.” Sounding unlike the familiar Morse dit-dit-dah of enciphered messages sent over the German Enigma network, the “new music” was a rhythmic warble of binary teletype code being transmitted at high speed.
Germany’s wartime engineers had developed a radically new encryption and transmission system. It was way more advanced than Enigma, which was patented in 1920.
To break the complex new cipher, engineer Tommy Flowers built Colossus, the world’s first large-scale programmable electronic digital computer. Flowers previously built Enigma-related codebreaking equipment for Alan Turing, the British mathematician.
The computer is being commemorated as an IEEE Milestone. The dedication ceremony is scheduled to be held 29 September at Bletchley Park.
Read more in the IEEE Spectrum article here.
For other posts on Colossus:
Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer
Veterans celebrate Colossus at 70
Colossus On A Raspberry Pi