OT - UK Government Records released under 30 year rule

[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).

[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.