Uncovering Colossus - Prof Brian Randell

Colossus, the world's first electronic computer, was built during World War II, but kept secret for more than 30 years. Professor Brian Randell tells the story about how he stumbled across a reference to its existence and eventually led to the UK government lifting the veil of secrecy surrounding this pioneering computer in 1975. Prof Brian Randell's presentation was given in the new Colossus Gallery in The National Museum of Computing on 7 February 2013.
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[@polyvg]

Some years ago I was a close acquaintance of someone whose father ran a transport company in the Wolverhampton area. At some point, that company had been contracted to move what must have been Colossus. I wish now I had made some notes and appreciated the story more. At the time, I had no idea how obscure the history was.

[@warp9988]

This is wonderful work, and a living treasure to see a talk from Prof. Randell.

[@IanBox]

Absolutely fascinating. I was at The University of Newcastle upon Tyne during the years 74-77 when Brian was gathering much of the detail of Colossus. As a student in the Computing Laboratory and a member of the Computer Society I was fortunate to be able to attend two of his informal lectures on his progress "hot off the press". This presentation brought back fond memories of that time, and allowed some of the (understandable) gaps in the details to be filled. Thanks.

[@michaeldawtry8826]

I have the utmost respect for this man and people like him, who have benefited us with their knowledge and research. I bet he could compose an intelligible sentence or paragraph, better than a lot people can in public comments on KZbin.

[@TaylorWJ]

A magnificent record of a significant event! Thanks to all involved

[@jozsefizsak]

It's a thrill hear about such amazing people to whom we owe so much. As Prof. Randell said, it's sad that only now are they getting some very overdue recognition.

[@LMacNeill]

What a fascinating history. I learned a great deal. Thank you for posting that online.

[@steveaustin62]

Brilliant, amazing human beings, thank goodness they were on our side.

[@markgillespie2165]

This is unbelievably fascinating. To hear directly from the actual person who unraveled all the mysteries around the codebreaking a Bletchley is a real treasure. The revelations around the Enigma, Bombes, Colossus and the other activities at Bletchley which provide the ULTRA intelligence changed the collective perspective of World War II, if only for the widely accepted belief it shortented the war by two years. These brilliant people and their many helpers were almost lost to time which was clearly what MI6 wanted. Professor Randell saved them all from obscurity. Computer history owes this man a great debt for his doggedness and tenacity. Imagine, writing the British Prime Minister asking for him the divulge what was then classified information !

[@angienicol1857]

Absolutely wonderful! Thank you 😊

[@MichaelSHartman]

Thank you for the presentation. I have an interest in the British WWII experience, and have been involved with computer science. It must have been a real thrill to meet these pioneers. To those who have witnessed 10 and 20 years of war, 2 years may not seem much. Two years of deaths is no small measure, but for Britain those two years meant more. Forced to intensively grow its own food for several years, the soil was becoming "tired", or unable to grow food. It was estimated Britain had a year or less left. A case might be made that those two shaved years saved the country.

[@showoffvideo]

Simply fascinating. Loved the continued correction to historical detail

[@dragade101]

These stories were gloss overed significantly when I was in secondary school and represent some extraordinary changes to come. My understanding is that the Brits still have some classified information regarding Colossus; which is a bloody shame.

[@davecasler]

I'd rather hear the hems & haws from someone who actually did something important than hear a polished presentation from someone who wasn't there. I watched the entire presentation with complete fascination. This is the man who broke through the walls of secrecy and "outed" the secret of the Colossus.

[@ShakepearesDaughter]

Good for you, but for me, I want to hear the story, not experience the honor of having it told by this professor. I greatly respect what he did, but I can't continue listening to him after 20 minutes because it is too painful to find the story in his filler noise. And if someone edited the remarks to be made, it would be a much more effective, much shorter presentation and would make its full impact. It is an important story and should be clearly told. His efforts deserve our attention, but they die a slow death in this form.

[@Verititas]

@@ShakepearesDaughter u u CB C V Vic iv C CB A BOOK HUB buy gug7 u up Cucuixuuuj u h. Owh us fb 7 to hug. 80

[@ohgosh5892]

Thank you Prof. and production team, for a really interesting description of the "Poirot of computing history" at work. Without this effort, the truth of Colossus would never have been revealed, and the incredible achievement of replicating the Flowers' design, using contemporary electronic parts, could never have been achieved. I've often wondered how different telecommunications might have been, had the Post Office and then BT been able to exploit its (Flowers') own work for electronic automation of telecoms signalling and switching, decades before it actually happened. There is now a bust of Tommy Flowers at Adastral Park Canteen, as it's no longer an official secret, also as a result of this work.

[@BillHalliwell]

Winston Churchill, when he gave the order for everything, literally everything, at Bletchley Park to be dismantled and destroyed into, as he said, “Nothing bigger than the size of a man’s hand…”, had no way of knowing the real damage he was about to do. Or, if he did know, then he should never be forgiven and this ‘self destruct’ order added to the list of his of blunders from both world wars. Of course, Churchill did a lot of good during his life, in power and outside of it. It took a great man like Professor Brian Randell to sort through the jigsaw puzzle about another set of great men, and women, who turned Bletchley Park into the world’s ground zero of code breaking. Trouble was, for Randell, most of those jigsaw pieces were missing and the people who knew what happened to just some of them didn’t want to talk to anyone. It is fascinating to learn how Brian Randell managed to convince those in the know to speak to him, eventually. This is a gripping documentary and all credit must be given to Prof. Randell for digging out the story before everyone who had first hand knowledge shed their mortal coils. Imagine what the immediate post war Britain would have been if they kept Colossus and developed it further. The UK would have led the world in computing technology which would have paid off the UK’s crippling US debts in a decade instead of nearly 50 years. Gordon Welchman and Alan Turing would have been the ‘Bill Gates’ et al of the computing world and we might very well have had personal computers in the mid 1960s. Sadly, perhaps necessarily, Churchill had an obsessive zeal to give anything and anyone to the Americans to induce them to help Britain in its struggle against the Nazis. You name the British technology, in any field, and Churchill gave all of it to the US. Perhaps the worst case of this was when Britain gave the US everything it had on nuclear fission. A team of boffins from the UK then went to America, as planned, to continue the work with the Americans. A similar deal was done with the UK’s Jet engine technology. But a raft of laws had been passed in the US that forbade the sharing of such material with any country, including the UK. So it was with Bletchley Park, of course, Churchill invited US scientists and engineers to go to B.P. and learn the workings of that establishment. Thank you for this important documentary and the magnificent work of rebuilding and refurbishment of Bletchley Park; perhaps the single most important location of all of WW2 and one the Nazis never knew about, even though there was a Russian double agent (Cairncross) in Hut 3. Cheers, BH

[@paul36uk]

What an excellent insight, I must visit Bletchley again soon

[@groverasylum9626]

Fantastic insight.

[@160rpm]

Great stuff

[@annamartin6281]

Very interesting, thank you.

[@punman5392]

It was a tragedy that Colossus was covered up for so long, especially considering how it was basically obsolete in terms of capability the moment eniac came online

[@MrSlitskirts]

Great presentation and subject. It's probably a coincidence that the film 'Colossus: The Forbin Project' (1970) also uses the same name for it's computer, but in a way it kind of relates to the impact and potential of the real Colossus as told here.

[@michaelmiller641]

Brilliant!

[@thekornreeper]

Great talk

[@thekornreeper]

the history is important.

[@mrglwatson]

Very interesting - wish I could have been there myself.

[@meh3247]

Thanks for the upload, fascinating stuff indeed! For those who are interested, "Secret War" (1977) _is available for download, if one knows where and how to search._

[@walterkronkitesleftshoe6684]

Thanks for the "heads up"..... downloading as I type. Thank you.

[@gongfei]

amazing!

[@ducks_love_bread]

My 7th grade English teacher would have had a seizure watching this lol whenever we had to speak and say umm or uhh she would say umm is not a word and of course that made you nervous and you stutter and end up saying it again and she would snap all mad and say that's not a word and that just made you more scared and yup you say it again.if you did it enough she would make you sit in the hall for 15 min lol i loved that hallway and it doesnt bother me at all that he says it it just reminded me of something i think now is funny...loved the presentation

[@ceedeekaytee1961]

I agree that was extremely painful to listen to. 30 mins of Umming, Ahhing and dithering interspersed with 33 mins of amazing story

[@odis-edgardavidsonthefamilyof]

I think I went through an entanglement this very enigma

[@duggydugg3937]

amazing the # of combinations it could power through to success

[@mfx1]

To everyone complaining about the Ers. etc. he'd done his back in which as I know myself can make concentration and breathing difficult. Cut him some slack.

[@IanHawthornThain]

+Martin King The other comments are valid. I have had spine surgery too so I am not unsympathetic, but as Prof Randell's delivery is now unequal to the task of giving a professional presentation I suggest you find somebody else to read his script. These things matter.

[@aliensector]

Indeed these things DO matter, especially if one is in a position that requires one to pass on information in a clear and concise manner. I have had to abondon this potentially important presentation after twenty-eight minutes purely on account of the incessant 'ers' and 'ums'. I hope any student attending one of this gentleman's lectures has had a less frustrating experience.

[@vossierebel]

Spellbinding... the will to know - about the truth! Destiny... the way it was meant to be!

[@reggiedixon2]

The Prof has not lost his slight trace of a Cardiff accent, you probably have to be a native to hear it but I noticed in the first 30 seconds.

[@henrychoy2764]

The pulleys are used to transport electrons on conveyor belts

[@Pencil0fDoom]

Remarkably astute of you Mr. Choy: prior the miniaturization the electron via the conversion of the Plank length over to metric, the larger subatomic particles were roughly the size of a breaker marble. Paradoxically, this meant breaker marbles, in those eldritch times, ranged in circumference from that of Mercury's orbit to just shy of 1AU, depending on manufacturer.

[@u.v.s.5583]

The Soviet equivalent used prisoners of war and convicts to carry the heavy electrons on their backs. Barefoot, underfed, in the snows of Siberia.

[@henrychoy2764]

@@u.v.s.5583 no they would not could not interfere with elections u no that

[@HakanKoseoglu]

We must go back there soon. TNMOC is one of my favourite places to visit.

[@baumdeslebens2133]

Gruß aus Frankfurt kzbin.info/www/bejne/h5DCZKigf5pnfbc (Wolfgang 🌍🌳🐉⚓

[@ceedeekaytee1961]

An amazing machine ! Unfortunately it contributed very little to the development of modern day electronic computing. Churchill made a short sighted decision to order the dectruction of all research material and all but one of the 17 Colossus machines they built. Just imagine what advances may have transpired had this technlogy been shared with the scientific community and or the developers of ENIAC back in the day.

[@presstodelete1165]

You could also argue that the war was both extended and the outcome exchanged.

[@thejll]

Did work at Bletchley Park stop at the end of the war?

[@peterthomas2013]

Short answer - No. History of UK intelligence is fascinating !!!

[@zounds010]

No. It was scaled down, but codebreaking continued, and the organization morphed into today's GCHQ.

[@ducks_love_bread]

During his presentation at one point he says the phrase computer pioneer.he then stops and says something in the effect of I better not say that and then used a different term and that made me curious as to what he meant by that.Why can't they say computer pioneer

[@Steve1734]

What not well known is the British Post Office holds the Patent for the 17" rack with a power bus. A system thats is in common use today in all computer data centers.

[@ohgosh5892]

19"?

[@ebaystars]

@@ohgosh5892 19 inch rack size is American but widely adopted

[@christopdesoto]

why was the codebreaking such a secret for so long?

[@doncarlodivargas5497]

Because of the soviet union and the cold war?

[@BillHalliwell]

I’ve just read several comments from some extremely tiresome people who get stuck into Professor Randell for their perception of his verbal delivery. Not a word about the subject matter, just cruel digs at an elderly person who has more intelligence in his fingernail clippings than they have in their entire empty brain pans. Serve me right for bothering to read the ‘noise’ of those who don’t have a clue; like they are not going to age, are they… I’m ‘round the back for a quick brandy, boys!...

[@ebaystars]

I quite agree, if one is looking for or expecting interpersonal respect being displayed on KZbin you have made a mistake. I live in Thailand where respect of elderly people is in their core of the Thai cultural being. The west is now full up to the gunnels with spivs who love to do nothing more than emit vulgarities at every opportunity. It's therefore best to turn off comments on publication of interesting stuff.

[@rhodiusscrolls3080]

These girls were known as strippers and not for the rumour that the machines made the huts so warm that they took off their clothes . I believe the stripping was of a different type and something to do with reducing the messages received into manageable format. Both behaviours are talked about depending on whose recollections you read.

[@rimckd825]

This was an electric/electrical computer, not electronic, correct... strictly speaking?

[@zounds010]

Vacuum tubes are considered electronics.

[@scowell]

Watch this at speed 1.25... and get ready to be annoyed. Get over it quickly, then enjoy.

[@philparr2724]

I’m sorry but this Machine belongs in the station x museum first,my mate who long deceased worked with Tommy latterly he was denied his status, as a pioneer, , but the world fates Turing, he wasn’t capable of building anything ....

[@ohgosh5892]

As Colossus was first built at Dollis Hill, one might reasonably suggest that a Colussus belongs at the Blackfriars Telecommunications museum, but the Bletchley museum is not an entirely bad location, is it?

[@zaverecnynavrh1047]

unfortunately there are no subtitles. No one in the world understands.

[@11WaterSkier11]

Bit too fan boy. I was interested in learning about it, but this isn't as helpful as I would have hoped.

[@Margarinetaylorgrease]

you poor thing

[@nyhammer1]

Not to self: Avoid the temptation to fill any thinking period with ahh, uhm, ehm and panted breathing when I get old.

[@mfx1]

nyhammer1 To be fair he'd done his back in which as I know myself can make concentration and breathing difficult.

[@daviddavis697]

there are a lot of comp sci principles that are clasified and not taught in colleges

[@BrokebackBob]

The American Eckert-Mauchley ENIAC was the first electronic non-mechanical computer. Just saying.

[@ChuckvdL]

Says the guy who clearly didn’t watch the video and knows nothing about the work colossus did.

[@neilmackenzie8345]

ummm , ahhhh , ummmm . ahhhh , a professor ???? did any of his students pass ?

[@diggnuts4834]

without the "ah ehh, uhm.. ahh uhm.. ah"s, this could have been 40 minutes.

[@FrancoBorgo]

Diggnuts I know I have mental problem but listening to him make me all stress up because of those ah, ehh, uhm. I just can't stand it. I wish there was CC (clean up of those of course) underneath. Still great information in this video

[@MarkeyJester]

@Franco Borgo His hmm's and umm's and so on were a little distracting, but it was an interesting story, I'm so glad he was able to uncover all of the details and preserve them before they got lost!

[@Margarinetaylorgrease]

You must all be amazing public speakers. Waiting for you books of original research and amazing stories

[@ohgosh5892]

@@MarkeyJester Then you have never done any lecturing or speaking. Lecturing is not about reading a script, that's what newsreaders do. Lecturing is about passing ideas and thoughts to others, so that they may learn. It's not easy to do it well, perhaps you might try it. The fact that this chap is doing a lecture whilst clearly in serious pain, is impressive, your apparent inability to even recognise this points to you having serious problems with empathy.

[@MarkeyJester]

@@ohgosh5892 Just an observation, not a critique.

[@henrychoy2764]

u can c it was made by apple

[@ShakepearesDaughter]

Fascinating subject, difficult to listen to, both in terms of the sound levels and the presenter. He may well be an expert in his field and hero of the dogged information diggers, but he is excruciating in his mumbling and hesitations. So many ums and ahs and uhs and other fillers, and his somewhat monotonous cadence. He strikes me as a very shy person who forces himself to speak in public. I forced myself to listen to this for 20 minutes and finally couldn't take it anymore.

[@BillHalliwell]

OK, Will’s Daughter, let me check back with you when you are 70+ and see how eloquently you verbally express yourself. I might also ask you what truly important, international firsts you’ve managed to achieve in your ‘perfect’ view of life and how you think people should age. I’ll bring a box of tissues just in case you are a dribbling wreck. What a nasty little person you are…

[@BillHalliwell]

@Phil Weatherley (See Above)

[@ohgosh5892]

"hero of the dogged information diggers" *ah, so you didn't come here to learn anything then!* Your writing is tedious, your punctuation is not worthy of a school pupil, and some of your sentences, whilst punctuated, are clearly incomplete. Did you get confused part way through? All too hard? Rather than 'forcing yourself' to listen to an expert, why not force yourself to learn some basic grammar, sentence construction and prose skills. That way, we would not have to put up with your illiterate trolling. In the future you might be able to troll in an erudite fashion, although I doubt you have the aptitude for such.

[@ebaystars]

I suspect an insolent american asshole, we have them here in Thailand and they are intensly disliked by everyone, however, if Shakespeare had a stutter and was interviewed would you then make the same rude comments?. I am so glad I dont have people like you as friends. I bet you are "gonna stutter" when your favorite (sic) cat gets run over.

[@MrKen-wy5dk]

After 2 hours of off and on listening to this guy, I gave up. He is just too boring to listen to. Give me a break.

[@Margarinetaylorgrease]

You poor old thing

[@cluxseltoot]

Dreadful presentation - retire.

[@Margarinetaylorgrease]

Bugger off.

[@jacktoddy9783]

@@Margarinetaylorgrease Dear Donny - thank you for your reply - I am computing your words just now and will get back to you in about 50-years' time. Have a nice day.

[@ohgosh5892]

"Dreadful presentation - retire." Cr4p troll, is that they best you have? I've seen ten year old kids who can do better than that. I suggest you give up trolling, you are really not very good at it.

[@jacktoddy9783]

@@ohgosh5892 Why you should get you knickers into a twist is beyond me. I merely stated what I thought after watching what in my opinion I found a dreadful video. If you are that neurotic then I suggest that you do not read the 'Comments' section. Rather than using the obvious recourse to having 'Shite for Brains' through calling me a troll just vent you spleen - why not construct something cogent as fact relating to the video and put it into text. However, it appears that your notion of comment is a received flat-battery thought process whereby, giving your best shot is a counter-insult. So I will reply to you as best as I can and honour you as an imbecile: "Go fuck yourself". In the nicest possible way.

[@ebaystars]

@@jacktoddy9783 what on earth is in your warped revolting mind to make such rude and obscene comments on this channel. There are many other channels where you can practice this modern "art". Why is it necessary to resort to swearing? One day you will be sitting in a wheelchair, withering and stuttering away, wearing wet pampers and I for one will not tell the nurse to change or feed you.