Colossus

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

Auteur
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).

Texte du rabat

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.

Résumé
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.

Contenu

• 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