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Domain: codesandciphers.org.uk
Stories and comments across the archive that link to codesandciphers.org.uk.
Stories · 4
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Sponsor a Valve On Colossus
mikejuk writes "The UK's National Museum of Computing has come up with a novel idea to raise funds for its new gallery for its rebuilt Colossus computer — you can sponsor a valve. All you have to do is buy a small area in a picture of Colossus (at £0.1 per pixel — min £10), upload a picture to occupy the space, set a URL and pay using PayPal." -
Bletchley Park WWII Staff Finally Recognized
99luftballon writes "Nearly 70 years after Station X (aka the Bletchley Park cryptanalysis unit) was set up, the surviving members are to be honored by the British government. Bletchley was one of the most important computing centers of its time and housed giants of the technology industry (as it was) like Tommy Flowers, who built Colossus, and Dr. Alan Turing. I was lucky enough to meet one of the staff at the site 11 years ago, and she was very bitter that their work was never recognized, and that they were bound by the Official Secrets Act and couldn't talk about it. It's just a shame that so few of the staff are still alive to receive the award." -
Colossus has been Rebuilt
Max Driver writes "In celebration of D-Day, "Colossus", one of the earliest electronic code-breaking machines, has been rebuilt after ten years of effort by computer conservationists. Colossus was used to break the Lorenz cipher. This story is being reported by the BBC. Remarkably, the use of parallel processing (five tape channels) and short gate delay time (1.2 microseconds) allows the Colossus to match the speed of a modern PC." -
Rebuilding Colossus
mclock writes "I've just been to a website claiming that the British Colossus was the first computer :
"As 1996 was the 50th anniversary of the switch-on of ENIAC I made sure that Colossus was rebuilt and working in Bletchley Park, just as it was in 1944. There has been a stunned silence from across the water!" See the excellent site for the full story on the rebuild of Colossus in 1996." We've done a couple pieces on ENIAC before, and recently had the declassfication of Colossus 2 info. Like I said in the earlier ENIAC piece, there's a lot of debate as to the first machine: The German's had Zuse, US with ENIAC, Britain with Colossus. Me, I'm going with the abacus.