From: jya@pipeline.com (John Young)
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Message Hash: b23958e5f1e97791008eaf0de29c39e97bcfde863acd1d0708229701d974562f
Message ID: <199607271737.RAA10853@pipe2.t2.usa.pipeline.com>
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UTC Datetime: 1996-07-27 19:43:29 UTC
Raw Date: Sun, 28 Jul 1996 03:43:29 +0800
From: jya@pipeline.com (John Young)
Date: Sun, 28 Jul 1996 03:43:29 +0800
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: COL_oss
Message-ID: <199607271737.RAA10853@pipe2.t2.usa.pipeline.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain
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.
-----
http://jya.com/coloss.txt (15 kb)
COL_oss
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1996-07-27 (Sun, 28 Jul 1996 03:43:29 +0800) - COL_oss - jya@pipeline.com (John Young)