Colossus

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• monk_the_dog · Jun 19, 2012 · Recommends

  I recently learned about Tommy Flowers and Colossus from this book: http://www.amazon.com/Colossus-secrets-Bletchley-code-breaki... The British kept Colossus secret for a too long and Flowers did not get enough credit (and von Neumann seems to get too…

  on “The codebreaker who saved 'millions of lives'” ↗
• antimagic · May 28, 2013 · Recommends

  There's a good book out - http://www.amazon.com/Colossus-secrets-Bletchley-code-breaki... The book talks about Tutte and Flowers and how they went about building the world's first true computer. It includes schematics and algorithms and other technical details…

  on “Bill Tutte – The Lesser Known Codebreaker of Bletchley Park” ↗
• munin · Oct 1, 2017 · Recommends

  Through no fault of its own, this is a very American-centric view of early computing. I'm pretty sure that at the time this was written, the story of COLOSSUS was still highly classified by the British government. It has since been declassified, and you might read about it in this book [1]. 1: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199578141

  on “The Origin of the Stored Program Concept (1985) [pdf]” ↗
• shabble · Mar 26, 2012 · Recommends

  Apart from Singh's incredibly famous one, I also quite enjoyed _Colossus: The secrets of Bletchley Park_[1] for technical history. The autobiography of Leo Marks: _Between Silk & Cyanide_[2] was a good (although I suspect quite heavily dramatised & exaggerated) read about…

  on “An Enigma cipher machine implemented in an Excel spreadsheet by a non-programmer” ↗
• rst · Dec 26, 2014 · Recommends

  …Digital Apollo, by David Mindell (development of Apollo guidance and avionics generally) The Dream Machine by Mitchell Waldrop (technical development leading up to the Arpanet, thence to the Internet) Colossus, the secrets of Bletchley Park's codebreaking computers, by Jack Copeland et al. Unfortunately, there's a lot more of the technically unsophisticated junk that Knuth is complaining about, and the excuses…

  on “The Tears of Donald Knuth” ↗
• streblo · Apr 24, 2009 · Recommends

  I liked Cryptonomicon, but more for the WWII side of the story. If you liked that part, check out Colossus by Jack Copeland. The Randy Waterhouse side of the story actually reminded me a lot of Digital Fortress by Dan Brown. Say what you will about Dan Brown, but I thought Digital Fortress was great.

  on “Ask HN: Recommend any good business/hacker fiction?” ↗
• munin · Sep 26, 2018 · Recommends

  "Battle of Wits" by Stephen Budianski "Colossus" by Jack Copeland "Between Silk and Cyanide" by Leo Marks

  on “WWII Bombe operator Ruth Bourne: I'd never heard of Enigma until after the war” ↗
• jshier · Jul 27, 2026 · Mentions

  Can anyone recommend a more technical book on the design and operation of the Colossus? I've found Colossus, a collections of essays edited by B. Jack Copeland, but not much else, at least on Amazon. (Also interested in anything on Zuse's computers, as I've mostly studied the Atanasoff-Berry…

  on “The Computer That Helped Win World War II” ↗
• jcrawfordor · Feb 1, 2021 · Mentions

  …was too large and delicate to be practical for naval applications), and Bletchley Park mounted a huge effort to decode it was well, which lead to the development of an electromechanical computer called Colossus. In the essay collection "Colossus," edited by B. Jack Copeland, authors contend that Colossus is a major milestone in computer history, more significant than the Bombe designed for Enigma messages, which…

  on “Unbroken Enigma Message” ↗