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2 hours ago
The British intelligence service GCHQ has published previously unknown photographs of a supercomputer called Colossus, which was secretly created during the Second World War and helped London decode correspondence between senior Nazi officials.
The operation of this computer was so well hidden that British intelligence agencies did not officially acknowledge its existence until the early 2000s. However, GCHQ has now decided to tell more about the invention that was crucial to the victory in honor of its 80th anniversary.
The famous British scientist Alan Turing, who was involved in deciphering Nazi messages encoded by the Enigma machine, did not take direct part in the Colossus project.
Turing’s developments helped create the supercomputer, but his own decryption machine was not electronic, but electro-mechanical, and it was made several years earlier.
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Some believe that Colossus is the first digital computer in history. It consisted of 2.5 thousand lamps, and the height of the device exceeded two meters. A whole group of qualified engineers was required to operate and maintain the computer.
Anne Keast-Butler, head of Britain’s electronic intelligence agency GCHQ, says the photographs show the creative and technical effort required to defend Britain against the Nazis.
“Technological innovation has always been at the core of what we do at GCHQ, and Colossus is a perfect example of how our people have helped us stay on the cutting edge of new technologies, even when we couldn’t tell,” says Keast. -Butler.
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The first Colossus began operating in early 1944. It was installed on the Bletchley Park estate in the English county of Buckinghamshire, where the headquarters of British codebreakers was located.
By the end of World War II, British experts had created 10 computers that helped decipher Nazi messages.
By the time of the victory over Nazi Germany, British secret computers served 550 people and they managed to decipher 63 million characters of top secret Nazi messages.
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Photo caption,
Keeping the computer running was a challenge
To mark the anniversary of the Colossus, GCHQ has also released for the first time its schematics, one of the secret letters deciphered by the computer (it talks about “rather alarming instructions from Germany”), as well as an audio recording of the sounds of the machine working.
Photo copyright Crown Copyright
Among other things, “Colossus” allowed the Allies to find out whether Hitler believed the deliberately false information that the landing of troops in France in June 1944 would take place in Calais, and not in Normandy (as it actually was).
Historians believe that the work of British computers helped end the war faster and saved the lives of many soldiers.
Secret behind seven seals
Although the work of the supercomputer “Colossus” and others like it greatly influenced the course of history, everyone who took part in the project signed a non-disclosure agreement. It was followed so strictly that the program’s existence was not mentioned in history books for almost 60 years.
After the war, eight of the ten computers that deciphered Nazi messages were destroyed.
The machine’s author, British engineer Tommy Flowers, was ordered to hand over all documentation of his invention to GCHQ.
The British authorities were so successful in keeping the existence of the program secret that even many years later, a GCHQ employee who worked on one of the Colossi in the 1960s admitted that he knew nothing about the role of the computer during the Second World War.
Andrew Herbert, head of the supervisory board of the National Computer Museum at Bletchley Park, says Colossus “was an important precursor to the modern electronic digital computer.”
“Many of those who worked on the Colossus at Bletchley Park later played important roles in the British computer industry. During the post-war decades, they were often world leaders in their field,” says Herbert.
2024-01-20 18:31:02
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