A German operator on 30 August 1941 wretched and changed the course of World War II. You sent a message that was not received correctly and required retransmission with the same key configuration.

This gave British cryptanalysts the opportunity to create copies of the German cipher machine, called the Lorenz SZ 40 and nicknamed “Tunny” by cryptographers.

This letter mentions Tommy Flowers, the architect and main person responsible for the construction of the Colossus. It is also noteworthy that Colossus had already intervened, including with “rather alarming German instructions”. Source: GCHQ.

Among these copies, Colossus, the world’s first digital electronic computer, stands out. Unlike ENIAC, which was designed for general-purpose calculations (in addition to weighing 30 times more), Colossus was created specifically to decrypt messages It was stopped by German commanders.

This image shows some of the Colossus components. Source: GCHQ.

Thanks to this machine, the war was shortened by months, saving “tens of thousands of lives,” according to the National Computer Museum.

This legendary computer remained in the shadows until the early 2000s, and now that it’s been 80 years since its creation, Britain’s GCHQ wanted to pay tribute to it with a series of unreleased images.

The footage was taken at GCHQ’s headquarters in Cheltenham in 1963. Source: GCHQ.

Plans for D-Day were already well underway when Colossus became operational, but It was one of the machines that helped fool HitlerThe one who was convinced that the landing would take place in the Straits of Calais and not in Normandy.

Diagram of the internal components of the Colossus. Source: GCHQ.

Those who worked on the development and subsequent release of Colossus always kept the project secret. This situation is unique because, while we knew for sixty years that Bombe machines had emerged to decipher Enigma, its existence was completely ignored. The reason was that its technology was used until the early 60s.

However, its role in the last part of the Second World War was very important. It allowed the Allies to decipher strategic messages transmitted between German headquarters in Europe.

Work will begin after many years recreating a functional copy It is currently on display at the National Computer Museum in Bletchley Park, the legendary institution where Alan Turing and his team of cryptanalysts worked.

in Xataka | John von Neumann, the genius who designed the architecture of our computers, did so 75 years ago, and this is just one of his achievements.