{"id":20423,"date":"2025-10-12T12:37:22","date_gmt":"2025-10-12T10:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/12\/move-over-alan-turing-meet-the-working-class-hero-of-bletchley-park-you-didnt-see-in-the-movies\/"},"modified":"2025-10-12T12:37:22","modified_gmt":"2025-10-12T10:37:22","slug":"move-over-alan-turing-meet-the-working-class-hero-of-bletchley-park-you-didnt-see-in-the-movies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/2025\/10\/12\/move-over-alan-turing-meet-the-working-class-hero-of-bletchley-park-you-didnt-see-in-the-movies\/","title":{"rendered":"Move over, Alan Turing: meet the working-class hero of Bletchley Park you didn\u2019t see in the movies"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Oxbridge-educated boffin is feted as the codebreaking genius who helped Britain win the war. But should a little-known Post Office engineer named Tommy Flowers be seen as the real father of computing?<\/p>\n

This is a story you know, right? It\u2019s early in the war and western Europe has fallen. Only the Channel stands between Britain and the fascist yoke; only Atlantic shipping lanes offer hope of the population continuing to be fed, clothed and armed. But hunting \u201cwolf packs\u201d of Nazi U-boats pick off merchant shipping at will, coordinated by radio instructions the Brits can intercept but can\u2019t read, thanks to the fiendish Enigma encryption machine. Unless something is done \u2013 and fast \u2013 Hitler\u2019s plan to first bomb, then starve the country will succeed. Enter the genius Alan Turing<\/a>, working as a codebreaker at the top secret Government Code and Cypher School\u00a0at Bletchley Park, who, in a generational act of intellectual virtuosity, designs and builds the world\u2019s first computer to crack Enigma, allowing the U-boats to be neutralised and the war ultimately to be won. This is why Turing is known as the father of computing.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a great story. But, like a lot of great stories, it couldn\u2019t be more wrong. The world\u2019s first digital electronic computer, forerunner of the ones reshaping our world today, was<\/em> built in Britain to revolutionise codebreaking during the second world war \u2013 a mind-boggling feat of creative innovation \u2013 but Turing wasn\u2019t in the country at the time. Neither was it conceived by the mostly private school and Oxbridge-educated boffins at Bletchley Park. Rather, the machine Park staff called Colossus was the brainchild of a degreeless Post Office engineer named Tommy Flowers, a cockney bricklayer\u2019s son who for decades was prevented by the Official Secrets Act from acknowledging his achievement. Now, with his 120th birthday approaching and a Tommy Flowers Foundation established to right this historical wrong, he is finally getting some of his due, starting with a mural by the artist Jimmy C (best known for the David Bowie mural in Brixton, south London) at the National Museum of Computing.<\/p>\n

Continue reading…<\/a>
\nThe Oxbridge-educated boffin is feted as the codebreaking genius who helped Britain win the war. But should a little-known Post Office engineer named Tommy Flowers be seen as the real father of computing?
\nThis is a story you know, right? It\u2019s early in the war and western Europe has fallen. Only the Channel stands between Britain and the fascist yoke; only Atlantic shipping lanes offer hope of the population continuing to be fed, clothed and armed. But hunting \u201cwolf packs\u201d of Nazi U-boats pick off merchant shipping at will, coordinated by radio instructions the Brits can intercept but can\u2019t read, thanks to the fiendish Enigma encryption machine. Unless something is done \u2013 and fast \u2013 Hitler\u2019s plan to first bomb, then starve the country will succeed. Enter the genius Alan Turing, working as a codebreaker at the top secret Government Code and Cypher School\u00a0at Bletchley Park, who, in a generational act of intellectual virtuosity, designs and builds the world\u2019s first computer to crack Enigma, allowing the U-boats to be neutralised and the war ultimately to be won. This is why Turing is known as the father of computing.
\nIt\u2019s a great story. But, like a lot of great stories, it couldn\u2019t be more wrong. The world\u2019s first digital electronic computer, forerunner of the ones reshaping our world today, was built in Britain to revolutionise codebreaking during the second world war \u2013 a mind-boggling feat of creative innovation \u2013 but Turing wasn\u2019t in the country at the time. Neither was it conceived by the mostly private school and Oxbridge-educated boffins at Bletchley Park. Rather, the machine Park staff called Colossus was the brainchild of a degreeless Post Office engineer named Tommy Flowers, a cockney bricklayer\u2019s son who for decades was prevented by the Official Secrets Act from acknowledging his achievement. Now, with his 120th birthday approaching and a Tommy Flowers Foundation established to right this historical wrong, he is finally getting some of his due, starting with a mural by the artist Jimmy C (best known for the David Bowie mural in Brixton, south London) at the National Museum of Computing. Continue reading…Technology | The Guardian<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Oxbridge-educated boffin is feted as the codebreaking genius who helped Britain win the war. But should a little-known Post Office engineer named Tommy Flowers be seen as the real father of computing? This is a story you know, right? It\u2019s early in the war and western Europe has fallen. Only the Channel stands between …<\/p>\n

Move over, Alan Turing: meet the working-class hero of Bletchley Park you didn\u2019t see in the movies<\/span> Read More »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":20424,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20423"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20423"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20423\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20424"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/costops.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}