COL_oss

[jya@pipeline.com (John Young)]

   7-27-96. FiTi: 
 
   "Colossus faces rebirth into a world of dispute." 
 
 
      The man behind the resurrection of Colossus is Tony 
      Sale, a computer expert and former MI5 operative who 
      once worked for Peter Wright of "Spycatcher" fame. Its 
      reconstruction, now in its final weeks, is not merely an 
      act of homage to the mathematical supermen of Bletchley 
      who hastened the Allied victory over the Nazis. Neither 
      is it just a triumph over the official secrecy in which 
      the machine was cloaked until a few years ago. It is a 
      working demonstration of Sale's contention that Colossus 
      was the world's first computer. 
 
 
      So sophisticated was the machine intelligence at 
      Bletchley Park that the very existence of Colossus was 
      not revealed until 1970, according to Tony Sale. After 
      the war the government ordered 10 Colossi to be broken 
      up -- some say as part of an intelligence deal with the 
      Americans. 
 
 
      Gripped by a desire to assert the claims of Colossus, 
      the former MI5 man asked GCHQ to reinstate his security 
      clearance so he could work on the project. The parts 
      could be found in any British telephone exchange up to 
      the 1970s. Yet it took until 1992 to get all the 
      electronics declassified. Only last November was Sale 
      allowed to demonstrate the machine's ability to break 
      the Lorenz wheel settings. Even today members of the 
      public are forbidden to operate Colossus: some of its 
      codebreaking algorithms are still, it seems, a secret. 
 
 
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   COL_oss