Tommy Flowers
Tommy Flowers MBE | |
---|---|
Born | Thomas Harold Flowers 22 December 1905 Poplar, London, England |
Died | 28 October 1998 Mill Hill, London, England | (aged 92)
Nationality | British |
Education | University of London |
Occupation | Engineer |
Known for | Colossus computer |
Spouse |
Eileen Margaret Green
(m. 1935) |
Children | 2 |
Thomas Harold Flowers MBE (22 December 1905 – 28 October 1998) was an English engineer with the British General Post Office. During World War II, Flowers designed and built Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic computer, to help decipher encrypted German messages.
Early life
Flowers was born at 160 Abbott Road, Poplar in East London on 22 December 1905, the son of a bricklayer.[1] Whilst undertaking an apprenticeship in mechanical engineering at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, he took evening classes at the University of London to earn a degree in electrical engineering.[1] In 1926, he joined the telecommunications branch of the General Post Office (GPO), moving to the Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill in Middlesex in 1930.
In 1935, Flowers and Eileen Margaret Green were married. The couple later had two children, John and Kenneth.[1]
From 1934 onward, he explored the use of electronics in telephone exchanges. By 1939, his design of equipment using 3000 to 4000 valves was in limited operation for (say) 1000 lines at an exchange with each line having three or four valves. Note that this was for (amplified) long distance or trunk lines between exchanges (central offices), using in-band signalling with switching at each end carried out by electromechanical switches or operators. As Flowers remarked, at the outbreak of war “he was possibly the only person in Britain who realised that valves could be used reliably on a large scale for high-speed computing. He was convinced that an all-electronic system was possible. A background in switching electronics would prove crucial for his computer designs.[2]
World War II
Flowers' first contact with wartime codebreaking came in February 1941 when his director, W. Gordon Radley, was asked for help by
The "Counter" project was abandoned but Turing was impressed with Flowers's work, and in February 1943 introduced him to Max Newman who was leading the effort to automate part of the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz cipher. This was a high-level German code generated by a teletypewriter in-line cipher machine, the Lorenz SZ40/42, one of their Geheimschreiber (secret writer) systems, called "Tunny" (tuna fish) by the British. It was a much more complex system than Enigma; the decoding procedure involved trying so many possibilities that it was impractical to do by hand. Flowers and Frank Morrell (also at Dollis Hill) designed the Heath Robinson, in an attempt to automate the cryptanalysis of the Lorenz SZ-40/42 cipher machine.[4]
Colossus computer
Flowers proposed a more sophisticated alternative, using an electronic system, which his staff called Colossus, using perhaps 1,800 thermionic valves (vacuum tubes) instead of 150 and having only one paper tape instead of two (which required synchronisation) by generating the wheel patterns electronically. Because the most complicated previous electronic device had used about 150 valves, some were sceptical that the system would be reliable. Flowers countered that the British telephone system used thousands of valves and was reliable because the electronics were operated in a stable environment with the circuitry on all the time. The Bletchley management were not convinced and merely encouraged Flowers to proceed on his own.[5] He did so at the Post Office Research Labs, using some of his own funds to build it. [6][7] Flowers had first met (and got on with) Turing in 1939 but was treated with disdain by Gordon Welchman, because of his advocacy of valves rather than relays. Welchman preferred the views of Wynn-Williams and Keene of the British Tabulating Machine Company (BTM) who had designed and constructed the Bombe and wanted Radley and "Mr Flowers of Dollis Hill" removed from work on Colossus for "squandering good valves".[8]
Despite the success of Colossus, the Heath Robinson approach was still valuable for solving certain problems.[9] The final development of the concept was a machine called Super Robinson that was designed by Tommy Flowers. This one could run four tapes and was used for running depths and "cribs" or known-plaintext attack runs. [9] On 2 June 1943, Flowers was made a member of the Order of the British Empire.[10]
Flowers gained full backing for his project from the director of the Post Office Research Station at Dollis Hill, W. G. Radley. With the highest priority for acquisition of parts, Flowers's team at Dollis Hill built the first machine in eleven months. It was immediately dubbed 'Colossus' by the Bletchley Park staff for its immense proportions. The Mark 1 Colossus operated five times faster and was more flexible than the previous system, named Heath Robinson, which used electro-mechanical switches. The first Mark 1, with 1500 valves, ran at Dollis Hill in November 1943; it was delivered to Bletchley Park in January 1944 where it was assembled and began operation in early February.[11] The algorithms used by Colossus were developed by W. T. Tutte and his team of mathematicians.[12] Colossus proved to be efficient and quick against the twelve-rotor Lorenz cipher SZ42 machine.[citation needed]
In anticipation of a need for additional computers, Flowers was already working on Colossus Mark 2 which would employ 2,400 valves.
Ten Colossi were completed and used during the
Post-war work and retirement
After the war, Flowers received little recognition for his contribution to
It was not until the 1970s that Flowers' work in computing was fully acknowledged. His family had known only that he had done some 'secret and important' work.[22]
In 1976, he published Introduction to Exchange Systems, a book on the engineering principles of telephone exchanges.[23]
Flowers died in 1998 aged 92, leaving a wife and two sons.[1]
Honours
- 1973: Became an honorary Doctor of Science by Newcastle University.[24]
- 1983: The first winner of the Martlesham Medal in recognition of his achievements in computing.[25]
- 1993: Received a certificate from Hendon College, having completed a basic course in information processing on a personal computer.[26]
Legacy
Flowers is commemorated at the Post Office Research Station site, which became a housing development, with the main building converted into a block of flats and an access road called Flowers Close. He was honoured by London Borough of Tower Hamlets, where he was born. An Information and Communications Technology (ICT) centre for young people, the Tommy Flowers Centre, opened there in November 2010.[27] The centre has closed but the building is now the Tommy Flowers Centre, part of the Tower Hamlets Pupil Referral Unit.[citation needed] In 2023, English Heritage placed a blue plaque here in his honour.[28]
In September 2012, his wartime diary was put on display at Bletchley Park.[29][30] A road in Kesgrave, near the current BT Research Laboratories, is named Tommy Flowers Drive.[31]
On 12 December 2013, 70 years after he created Colossus, his legacy was honoured with a memorial commissioned by
On 29 September 2016, BT opened the Tommy Flowers Institute
In 2018, a room in the newly refurbished Institution of Engineering and Technology in London was named the Flowers Room.[citation needed]
Colossus rebuild
A functioning Colossus Mark II was rebuilt by a team of volunteers led by Tony Sale between 1993 and 2008.[35] It is on display at The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park.[11][36]
Flowers knew that Sale was rebuilding a MKII version, describing the design and construction which was instrumental in its reconstruction.[37] [17]
See also
References
- ^ doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/71253. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ a b Erskine & Smith 2011, p. 352.
- ^ Randell 2006, p. 144
- ^ a b Tommy Flowers
- ^ See interview of Flowers in PBS Nova "Decoding Nazi Secrets" 2015
- ISBN 9780199543168.
- ISBN 9781861897374.
- ISBN 978-1-84513-539-3.
- ^ ISBN 9781782394020.
- ^ "No. 36035". The London Gazette (Supplement). 4 June 1943. pp. 2491–2495.
- ^ a b The Colossus Gallery | The National Museum of Computing
- ^ Biography of Professor Tutte | Combinatorics and Optimization | University of Waterloo
- ^ Flowers 2006, p. 81
- ^ "Station X (TV series)". British Film Institute. Archived from the original on 22 February 2014.
- NOVA. PBS. 9 November 1999. Retrieved 4 March 2017.
- ISBN 9781783521678.
- ^ a b "Colossus – The Greatest Secret in the History of Computing". YouTube. 4 May 2020. Archived from the original on 22 December 2021.
- ^ Laird, Robbin (16 December 2018). "Remembering Tommy Flowers: The Inventor of the Programmable Computer and Making a Key Contribution to a War Winning Approach". Second Line of Defense. Retrieved 26 May 2020.
- ^ "Inside Out: Premium Bonds". BBC North West. 20 September 2004.
- ISSN 0958-7403.
- ^ Randell, Brian (1980). "A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century: The Colossus" (PDF). Newcastle University, UK.
- ^ "Tommy Flowers: Technical Innovator". BBC. 8 April 2003.
- ISBN 0-471-01865-1.
- ^ "Public Orator's speech for Thomas Harold Flowers". Newcastle University School of Computing Science. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016.
- ISBN 0852962185.
- ^ "Code-Breakers: Bletchley Park's Lost Heroes". BBC Two. 29 October 2011.
- ^ "Official Launch of The Tommy Flowers City Learning Centre". Tower Hamlets CLC. Retrieved 25 October 2011.
- ^ "Tommy Flowers | engineer | blue plaques". English Heritage. Retrieved 14 September 2023.
- ^ "Wartime diary helps to tell Colossus story". BBC News. 7 September 2012.
- ^ "Colossus and Tommy Flowers' Diary". YouTube. 30 April 2020. Archived from the original on 22 December 2021.
- ^ Comber, Alan. "Road Naming". Kesgrave Town Council. Archived from the original on 9 April 2017. Retrieved 4 March 2017.
- ^ "BT remembers Tommy Flowers' achievements". BT. 23 May 2014. Retrieved 4 March 2017.
- ^ "Tommy Flowers Institute". Adastral Park. Archived from the original on 5 October 2016.
- ^ "Tommy Flowers Institute for ICT launched at BT's Adastral Park". BT. 29 September 2016. Retrieved 4 March 2017.
- ^ coltalk_2
- ^ Colossus computer conservationist Tony Sale dies – BBC News
- S2CID 39816473. Retrieved 12 October 2007.
- Sale, Tony, The Colossus its purpose and operation
Bibliography
- ISBN 978-0-19-284055-4.
- Erskine, Ralph; ISBN 978-1-84954-078-0Updated and extended version of Action This Day: From Breaking of the Enigma Code to the Birth of the Modern Computer Bantam Press 2001
- Gannon, Paul (2006). Colossus: Bletchley Park's Greatest Secret. London: Atlantic Books. ISBN 1-84354-330-3.
- Flowers, Thomas H. (2006). "D-Day at Bletchley Park".
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(help) in Copeland 2006, pp. 78–83 - Randell, Brian (2006). "Of Men and Machines".
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(help) in Copeland 2006, pp. 141–149 - ISBN 978-0-7522-2189-2