Working with Colossus towards the end of World War II. Tommy Flowers The mansion at Bletchley Park

Boffin of Bletchley who was a bricklayer's son

Colossus was the best kept secret of
World War II, writes Illtyd Harrington

The New York Times carries a slogan every day: ÔAll the news that's fit to print." Recently it ran some headlines which caught my eye - "A world without secrets how to listen for the sounds of plutonium." Apparently the science and technology departments of CIA even had a robotic ÔbutterflyÕ able to monitor an atomic site while passing-by. Time perhaps for spies to collect their P45s and redundancy pay.
A timely moment to remind ourselves of the technological triumph of public achievement in inventing what was the first computer and most effective code breaker Colossus: Bletchley ParkÕs Greatest Secret. Paul Gannon thoroughly explains the bewildering and often startling world of Òlistening in or eavesdroppingÓ. Messages, lies, secrets, all interpreted often by men who appear to be old- fashioned post office telephone engineers, many were.
Dollis Hill stationed on the Jubilee Line was where the Post Office research station was situated, the place where they worked inventing the all- seeing machine which looked like two old bedsteads.
It was a giant step in technology in the history of retrieving enemy intelligence. As far back as World War I, room 40 in the Admiralty dealt with 40,000 signals a year.
By 1943 when Colossus had been taken from Dollis Hill to Bletchley Park, 50 miles north of London and half way between Oxford and Cambridge a staggering change was imminent.
Desperate to keep tabs on German wireless traffic, the Bletchley boffins eventually reduced 22 billion characteristics to a few hundred and made them intelligible.
At the heart of this Dr Who world were a group of geniuses who triumphed over bureaucracy and turf war. None of them came from the scientific elite. There was a tragic Alan Turing driven to suicide by a gay-hating policeman. (Derek Jacobi played him on stage).
There was Max Newman the son of a German immigrant. Bill Tutte young chemistry student at Cambridge and Alec Reaves who believed in the existence of other worlds but his brilliance worked out a decoding system which could work to a thousandth of a second.
This in-house group was completed by Colonel John Tiltman who abhorred formality.
But there was one other: Tommy Flowers, West Ham working-class lad and electronics genius who championed the use of valves as the main part to build Colossus. He was the senior Post Office engineer.
Incredibly, as the war went on, German secret transmitting machines called ÔGehemschreiberÕ were often located or destroyed by looting troops in north Africa until their significance was realised.
After this several were quickly dispatched to Bletchley Park which spurred the boffins into quicker understanding.
Thereafter they had the enemy under almost complete audio scrutiny Ð even the FuhrerÕs rants.
A counter intelligence system whimsically called Fish spawned detective systems such as ÔcodÕ, ÔtunaÕ, ÔbreamÕ, ÔsturgeonÕ and ÔtroutÕ.
Colossus could decrypt 22 million symbols. Tommy Flowers, a bricklayerÕs son saw his creation handle 5,000 characters a second by 1945. A grateful nation gave him £1,000 Ð the traditional inventors reward Ð and, 40 years later, an OBE.
As Gannon says: ÒThis public enterprise has given birth to revolutionary technological research and development programs of outstanding value.Ó Now GCHQ at Cheltenham can, if necessary, monitor all our telephone calls. Not a comforting thought.
In hindsight, I never realised how much of this publicly based achievement was lifted by the USA. While we were monitoring the Axis, IBM had been employed to card index Holocaust and slave labour victims, a technology available to be used for benefit or abuse.
I ask where do we go from here? Even the London Transport oyster card can be summoned as proof of where we got on the bus even after some time.
Big Brother is well and truly at home.

CLICK BELOW TO SEARCH FOR ACCOMODATION