Unsung Hereos: The story of Bill Tutte

Computer Weekly went to Station X, Britain’s top secret World War 2 code breaking headquarters, to discover the story behind Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer. Senior reporter Ian Grant spoke to cryptographer Captain Jerry Roberts about the origins of Colossus. Roberts worked in the Testery, the part of Station X devoted to cracking Tunny, the code used by Hitler and his top generals. His colleagues included Alan Turing and Bill Tutte, the man responsible for working out how the Germans encrypted their messages. As Roberts makes clear, without Tutte, Post Office engineer Tommy Flowers could never have invented Colossus, the first digital programmable electronic computer, thus laying the foundation for all electronic computers. And as Roberts makes equally clear, Tutte and Flowers have never received popular recognition of their roles as pioneers of the computer age.