OT - UK Government Records released under 30 year rule

[Rainbow Six]

Afternoon,

The UK Government has just released a number of previously classified documents from 1983, some of which may be of some interest, such as nuclear weapons policy, assorted papers from the Ministry of Defence and the UK Government's 'State of Security Assessments' on a number of countries. Details here...

http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/n...ights-1983.htm

There's also a copy of a speech that was written for an exercise detailing a potential speech the Queen might have given to the nation in the event of nuclear attack.

http://www.ft.com/cms/f147e0f8-fa86-...144feabdc0.pdf

[Cdnwolf]

Good find.

[pmulcahy11b]

Are details of Colossus still classified below the surface level?

[mikeo80]

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

Are details of Colossus still classified below the surface level?

Colossus? I have not heard of this out side of a movie, Forbin Project I believe. Real life has made my Goggle-fu very weak.

My $0.02

Mike

[pmulcahy11b]

Originally Posted by mikeo80

Colossus? I have not heard of this out side of a movie, Forbin Project I believe. Real life has made my Goggle-fu very weak.

My $0.02

Mike

Colossus was the actual first electronic computer, IIRC circa 1943 or 1944, two or three years before ENIAC. It was heavily classified by the British MoD until the late 1970s, but not everything came out. One of its accomplishments was the breaking of Enigma (though the capture of an entire machine helped out).

[Targan]

Originally Posted by mikeo80

Colossus? I have not heard of this out side of a movie, Forbin Project I believe. Real life has made my Goggle-fu very weak.

Colossus computer

[Rainbow Six]

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

Are details of Colossus still classified below the surface level?

I don't think there's any way of knowing...some stuff can stay sealed for longer periods (I can't remember exactly what it was about but I do seem to recall a furore in the press a while ago because it had been decided that something that on the surface appeared relatively innocuous had been sealed for 100 years instead of the normal period, which was 30 years but is in the process of changing to 20) and some stuff stays sealed permanently for various reasons, e.g. national security.

[Sanjuro]

I don't think any part of Colossus is still classified: the difficulty with making a replica is that all the originals, along with all plans AFAIK, were destroyed post-war.
That's one way of keeping a secret!

[Cdnwolf]

Originally Posted by pmulcahy11b

Colossus was the actual first electronic computer, IIRC circa 1943 or 1944, two or three years before ENIAC. It was heavily classified by the British MoD until the late 1970s, but not everything came out. One of its accomplishments was the breaking of Enigma (though the capture of an entire machine helped out).

It has sometimes been erroneously stated that Alan Turing designed Colossus to aid the Cryptanalysis of the Enigma machine. Turing's machine that helped solve Enigma, was the electromechanical Bombe, not Colossus.