Colossus: the first computer

Although Charles Babbage designed the Difference Engine in 1822, it was never built in his life time. The plaudits for the first actual computer go to Tommy Flowers. While working at Bletchley Park during World War 2, he designed Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer, to break the German Lorenz cipher. Colossus was incredibly fast, and could break the first part of the cipher in less than 30 minutes. It was later discovered that the computer could be used for wheel breaking, which was the second part of breaking the code. Sadly, after the war, Colossus was broken down and kept a secret, so details of how it worked were not widely known. As such, modern computers have evolved from subsequent projects. Still, Colossus proved a high-speed electronic computer could be made reliably, so its importance on the modern world should not be overlooked.