Shrouded in secrecy until recently, Colossus was the world's first fully-functioning electronic computer, built during the Second World War and used at Bletchley Park to crack the codes of high-level Nazi communications. This collection of essays delves into code-breaking, personal recollections, and declassified information.

compelling compilation

Autorentext
Jack Copeland is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and Director of the Turing Archive for the History of Computing, and has been studying the history of Bletchley Park since 1992. He is a contributor to Scientific American and his previous publications include Artificial Intelligence, (Blackwell, 1993), Logic and Reality (OUP, 1996), Turing's Machines (OUP, forthcoming), The Essential Turing (OUP, 2004), and Alan Turing's Automatic Computing Engine (OUP, 2005).

Klappentext

Reveals the secrets of Bletchley Park's code-breaking computers, through a collection of essays, personal recollections, and human stories. Delves into code-breaking and newly declassified information.

Zusammenfassung
At last - the secrets of Bletchley Park's powerful codebreaking computers. This is a history of Colossus, the world's first fully-functioning electronic digital computer. Colossus was used during the Second World War at the Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park, where it played an invaluable role cracking enemy codes. Until very recently, much about the Colossus machine was shrouded in secrecy, largely because the codes that were employed remained in use by the British security services until a short time ago. This book only became possible due to the declassification in the US of wartime documents. With an introductory essay on cryptography and the history of code-breaking by Simon Singh, this book reveals the workings of Colossus and the extraordinary staff at Bletchley Park through personal accounts by those who lived and worked with the computer. Among them is the testimony of Thomas Flowers, who was the architect of Colossus and whose personal account, written shortly before he died, is published here for the first time. Other essays consider the historical importance of this remarkable machine, and its impact on the generations of computing technology that followed.

Inhalt

1: Simon Singh: A Brief History of Cryptography from Caesar to Bletchley Park
2: Michael Smith: How It Began: Bletchley Park Goes to War
3: Jack Copeland: The German Tunny Machine
4: Stephen Budiansky: Colossus, Codebreaking, and the Digital Age
5: Jack Copeland: Machine Against Machine
6: Thomas H. Flowers: D-Day at Bletchley Park
7: Jack Copeland: Intercept!
8: Thomas H. Flowers: Colossus
9: Jack Copeland: Colossus and the Rise of the Modern Computer
10: Benjamin Wells: The PC-User's Guide to Colossus
11: Brian Randell: Of Men and Machines
12: Tony Sale: The Colossus Rebuild
13: Jack Copeland, with Catherine Caughey, Dorothy Du Boisson, Eleanor Ireland, Ken Myers, and Norman Thurlow: Mr Newman's Section
14: William Newman: Max Newman-Mathematician, Codebreaker and Computer Pioneer
15: Peter Hilton: Living with Fish: Breaking Tunny in the Newmanry and the Testery
16: Jack Good: From Hut 8 to the Newmanry
17: Donald Michie: Codebreaking and Colossus
18: Jerry Roberts: Major Tester's Section
19: Roy Jenkins: Setter and Breaker
20: Helen Currie: An ATS Girl in the Testery
21: Peter Edgerley: The Testery and the Breaking of Fish
22: Jack Copeland, with David Bolam, Harry Fensom, Gil Hayward, and Norman Thurlow: Dollis Hill at War
23: Gil Hayward: The British Tunny Machine
24: Harry Fensom: How Colossus was Built and Operated-One of Its Engineers Reveals Its Secrets
25: Frode Weierud: Bletchley Park's Sturgeon-The Fish That Laid No Eggs
26: Craig McKay: Geheimschreiber Traffic and Swedish Wartime Intelligence
A1: Timeline: The Breaking of Tunny
A2: Jack Copeland: The Teleprinter Alphabet
A3: Jack Copeland: The Tunny Addition Square
A4: Bill Tutte: My Work at Bletchley Park
A5: Friedrich Bauer: The Tiltman Break
A6: Jack Copeland: Turingery
A7: Max Newman: Dc-Method
A8: Friedrich Bauer: Newman's Theorem
A9: Frank Carter: Rectangling
A10: Jack Good, Donald Michie, and Geoffrey Timms: The Motor Wheels and Limitations
A11: Jack Good and Donald Michie: Motorless Tunny
A12: Friedrich Bauer: Origin of the Fish Cypher Machines