E159 - Colossus in Context Part 1

Bletchley Park

History

4.8 • 177 Ratings

🗓️ 18 January 2024

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

January 2024

Eighty years ago, in January 1944, the first Colossus computer was delivered to Bletchley Park. This machine and the nine that followed it have acquired legendary status within the story of World War Two codebreaking. The machines have also been described as the world’s first large-scale electronic digital computers – direct precursors of the digital world in which we live today.

But in 1944 the computer age still lay far in the future. These machines were built for a specific and vital purpose, to assist with the breaking of the wireless messages of Germany’s senior commanders, enciphered using the Lorenz cipher machine and known at BP as ‘Tunny’.

What role did Colossus actually play in the breaking of Tunny? The Colossus machines were members of a wider family of machines, and the Newmanry – the department in which they operated - was only one of several teams at Bletchley Park, all of whom were crucial to the successful breaking of the cipher.

In this ‘It Happened Here’ episode, Bletchley Park historians Dr Tom Cheetham and Dr David Kenyon are here to place ’Colossus in Context’ and examine where exactly these machines fitted into the effort to break Tunny.

This episode features the following contributors from our Oral History Archive:

Jerry Roberts
Betty Webb

Image: ©Bletchley Park Trust 2024

#BPark, #Bletchleypark, #WW2, #Colossus80,

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is Mark, the podcast producer. Just a quick note before this episode starts.
0:07.0	This was originally going to be one episode to celebrate the arrival of Colossus 80 years ago this month.
0:14.0	Now, David and Tom liked to go into detail, and we wanted to really do justice to this subject so instead of one episode we're
0:22.6	splitting this into two parts. This first part looks at the background to why Colossus had
0:28.1	to be built in the first place and part two will pick up the story from there. Now over to
0:33.2	the show. From the home of the codebreakers and the birthplace of modern computing, this is the Bletchley Park podcast.
1:15.9	Welcome to the January 2024 episode of the Bletchley Park podcast.
1:18.3	Colossus in context.
1:25.5	80 years ago in January 1944, the first Colossus computer was delivered to Bletchley Park.
1:28.2	This machine and the nine that followed it have acquired legendary status within the story of World War II code breaking. The machines have
1:33.4	also been described as the world's first large-scale electronic digital computers, direct precursors
1:40.0	of the digital world in which we live today. But in 1944, the computer age still lay far in the future.
1:47.3	These machines were built for a specific and vital purpose
1:50.5	to assist with the breaking of the wireless messages of Germany's senior commanders,
1:55.5	enciphered using the Lorenz cipher machine,
1:57.9	and known at BP as Tunney.
2:00.6	What role did Colossus actually play in the breaking of Tunney?
2:04.3	The Colossus machines were members of a wider family of machines,
2:07.3	and the Newmanry, the department in which they operated,
2:10.2	was only one of several teams at Bletchley Park,
2:12.8	all of whom were crucial to the successful breaking of the cipher.
2:16.7	In this, itened Here episode,
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Bletchley Park, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Bletchley Park and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.