![]() ![]() The team that built it included some of the same team of engineers who built Colossus, the world's first electronic computer. The first ERNIE was built in 1956 by the Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill. The bonds are entered in a regular prize draw each month and can win various amounts up to the current top prize of £1,000,000. ![]() The Colossus Rebuild Project by the late Tony Sale »Į.R.N.I.E (Electronic Random Number Indicator Equipment)ĮRNIE was a hardware random number generator created to find winners each month for the premium bond prize draw. A Premium Bond is a lottery bond issued by the United Kingdom government's National Savings and Investments agency. Uncovering Colossus By Professor Brian Randell » Using only scraps of diagrams, old pictures and half-forgotten memories Tony Sale and his team re-created this fantastic world-first for Britain and set the benchmark for computer conservation.įor further information about how the Colossus story surfaced, and more details about the Colossus rebuild project by the late Tony sale, click on the following links: It has taken nearly fifteen years to rebuild the Mark II Colossus computer in the same position as Colossus 9 originally occupied in Block H. Colossus was not included in the history of computing hardware for decades, and Flowers and his associates were deprived of the recognition they were due for many years. The use to which the Colossi were put was of the highest secrecy, and Colossus itself was highly secret, and remained so for many years after the War. The first fully programmable digital electronic computer capable of running a stored program was still some way off - the 1948 Manchester Small Scale Experimental Machine. Colossus, however, was the first that was digital, programmable, and electronic. ![]() The notion of a computer as a general purpose machine - that is, as more than a calculator devoted to solving difficult but specific problems - would not become prominent for several years.Ĭolossus was preceded by several computers, many of them being a first in some category. After a functional test, Colossus Mk 1 was delivered to Bletchley Park in late December 1943 / January 1944, was assembled there by Harry Fensom and Don Horwood, and was working in early February 1944.Ĭolossus was the first of the electronic digital machines with programmability, albeit limited in modern terms. Tommy Flowers spent eleven months designing and building Colossus at the Post Office Research Station, Dollis Hill, in North West London. Much work has still to be done to complete perhaps the world's most exciting computing exhibit, but already Colossus is viewable by the public as never before and is set to inspire future generations of engineers and computer scientists. In 2012, a major fundraising campaign, led by TNMOC trustee Tim Reynolds, was launched to convert the old Colossus workshop room into a brand new Gallery. Once again Colossus was able to crack the Lorenz code (in 3.5 hours), but was beaten in the race by Joachim Schueth, a professional computer software engineer, who wrote special software for his PC to break the ciphertext in just 46 seconds! They succeeded and in 2007 it was tested in the global Colossus Cipher Challenge. In 1992, Tony Sale and his team began the ambitious task of rebuilding a working Colossus. Not until 1975 when the first information about Colossus was declassified could the story begin to be told. The cipher text was input via paper tape and the 2500 valves of Colossus would find the Lorenz machine chi-wheel settings.īy the end of the war, 63 million characters of high-grade German communications had been decrypted by 550 people helped by the ten Colossus computers. The information gleaned from the decrypted messages is widely acknowledged to have shortened the war by many months, saving tens of thousands of lives. ![]() Colossus reduced the time to work out the Lorenz chi-wheel settings and enabled more messages to be deciphered and the whole code-breaking operation to be accelerated. ![]()
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