Tommy Flowers
Flowers demonstrated that electronic engineering could be made reliable enough for sustained cryptanalytic operations. Colossus is an essential case study in using specialized computing to analyze a protected communications system.
Thomas Harold Flowers was a British engineer at the Post Office Research Station who designed Colossus for Bletchley Park. The machines were built to accelerate statistical analysis of German Lorenz traffic.
Engineering for cryptanalysis
Flowers’s design used large numbers of electronic valves in a purpose-built system that could process punched-tape data at speed. Colossus was used operationally in the final years of the war and became a landmark of electronic computing history.
In memoriam
Flowers died in 1998. His engineering work remains central to the history of applied computing and cryptanalysis.
Timeline
- 1905Born in London, England.
- 1926Joins the Post Office engineering organization.
- 1943Begins building the first Colossus for Bletchley Park.
- 1944Colossus Mark I becomes operational.
- 1945Additional Colossus machines support wartime Lorenz analysis.
- 1998Dies in London, England.
Tommy Flowers
- Type
- Person
- Era
- 1930s-1998
- Born
- 1905
- Died
- 1998
- Known for
- Colossus; Electronic computing; Lorenz cryptanalysis; Post Office Research Station
- Tags
- electronics, colossus, cryptanalysis, computing, bletchley-park
Created by Joas A Santos · Something wrong or want it removed? Open an issue.