January 01, 1970
The
first Colossus is operational at Bletchley Park. Designed by British
engineer Tommy Flowers, the Colossus was designed to break the complex
Lorenz ciphers used by the Nazis during WWII. A total of ten Colossi
were delivered to Bletchley, each using 1,500 vacuum tubes and a series
of pulleys transported continuous rolls of punched paper tape containing
possible solutions to a particular code. Colossus reduced the time to
break Lorenz messages from weeks to hours. The machine’s existence was
not made public until the 1970s.
Source: - www.computerhistory.org
