On commission of the British secret service, Colossus, one of the first computers that was used to break German codes in World War Two, was designed by Tommy Flowers, and built under the leadership of Alan Turing in 1943. The decoding process proved successful using a combination of various mathematical, military and secret service methods. Several versions of the machine had been produced before the last two were ultimately dismantled in 1959 and 1960.
Since secrecy veiled the usage, what?s more, the existence of Colossus until the 1970s, its story was not included in earlier computer hardware histories. Brian Randell, researcher, now professor emeritus, of the Newcastle School of Computing Science, uncovered the existence of the machine in the late 1970s. He has recently uploaded a fascinating video on YouTube (www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl6pK1Z7B5Q) in order to share the uncovering and the unique story of Colossus.

A replica of the prototype Colossus No. 9 was rebuilt and named Colossus Mark 2. It was put on display in November 2007 at the National Museum of Computing in Britain (www.tnmoc.org), where it can be viewed ever since.