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Tinker with a virtual Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic digital computer [1]

['Rob Beschizza']

Date: 2024-04-10  

I wasn't expecting the Virtual Colossus to be implemented in three-dimensional space as a browser-based first-person experience. It's a little nightmarish, even, clacking rhythmically, insistently, ominously. And you need to help Britain defeat the Nazis! Decrypt a Lorenz S742 message!

This document will take you through an example process used on Colossus to get the start positions of a received message. There wasn't a set program which would run to work out the settings, it was a matter of following a "menu" of different algorithms and sometimes required knowledge of what worked on a particular radio link. Colossus was not able to run a sequence of algorithms or use the results of previous calculations (like we would expect from a computer today), each run required a decision by the operator or code breaker assigned to that machine on which operation would be the next best to run.

I don't even want to touch any of its knobs, dials or other protuberances, lest I lose the war. There's even a clock on the wall to remind you that you're not helping.

[END]
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[1] Url: https://boingboing.net/2024/04/10/tinker-with-a-virtual-colossus-the-worlds-first-programmable-electronic-digital-computer.html

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