Tommy Flowers
Thomas Harold Flowers, BSc, DSc,[1] OBE (22 December 1905 – 28 October 1998) was a British engineer. During World War II, Flowers designed Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic computer, to help solve encrypted German messages.
Thomas Harold Flowers OBE | |
|---|---|
 Tommy Flowers - possibly taken around the time he was at Bletchley Park | |
| Born | 22 December 1905 |
| Died | 28 October 1998 (aged 92) Mill Hill, London, England |
| Nationality | British |
| Occupation | Engineer |
| Spouse(s) | Eileen Margeret Green |
| Children | 2 |
The first Mark 1, with 1500 vacuum tube valves, ran at Dollis Hill in November 1943, and then at Bletchley Park in January 1944.
A Mark 2 redesign with 2,400 valves had begun before the first computer was finished. The first Mark 2 Colossus went into service at Bletchley Park on 1 June 1944, and immediately produced vital information for the imminent D-Day landing.
Results
Flowers had a crucial meeting with Dwight D. Eisenhower and his staff on 5 June. A courier handed Eisenhower a note summarizing a Colossus decrypt. This confirmed that Hitler wanted no additional troops moved to Normandy, as he was still convinced that the preparations for the Normandy invasion were a diversionary feint. Eisenhower announced to his staff, "We go tomorrow".[2]
Earlier, a report from Field Marshall Rommel on the western defences was decoded by Colossus and showed that one of the drop sites for a US parachute division was the base of a German tank division. The site was changed.[3]
Years later, Flowers described the design and construction of these computers.[4]
Tommy Flowers Media
Front view of the Colossus rebuild showing, from right to left (1) The "bedstead" containing the message tape in its continuous loop and with a second one loaded. (2) The J-rack containing the Selection Panel and Plug Panel.
References
- ↑ Lee, John A. N. (1995). International Biographical Dictionary of Computer Pioneers. Taylor & Francis. p. 306. ISBN 9781884964473.
- ↑ Flowers, Thomas H. 2006. D-Day at Bletchley Park, in Copeland B.J. (ed) Colossus: the secrets of Bletchley Park's codebreaking computers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 78–83. ISBN 978-0-19-284055-4
- ↑ "'Station X'". Archived from the original on 2014-02-22. Retrieved 2013-11-02.
- ↑ Howard, Campaigne (1983). "The design of Colossus: Thomas H. Flowers". Annals of the History of Computing. 5 (3): 239. Retrieved 2007-10-12.