Milestone-Proposal talk:Colossus

Advocates’ Checklist

1. Is the proposal for an achievement rather than for a person? If the citation includes a person's name, have the proposers provided the required justification for inclusion of the person's name?
2. Was the proposed achievement a significant advance rather than an incremental improvement to an existing technology?
3. Were there prior or contemporary achievements of a similar nature? If so, have they been properly considered in the background information and in the citation?
4. Has the achievement truly led to a functioning, useful, or marketable technology?
5. Is the proposal adequately supported by significant references (minimum of five) such as patents, contemporary newspaper articles, journal articles, or citations to pages in scholarly books? At least one of the references should be from a peer-reviewed scholarly book or journal article. The full text of the material, not just the references, shall be present. If the supporting texts are copyright-encumbered and cannot be posted on the ETHW for intellectual property reasons, the proposers shall email a copy to the History Center so that it can be forwarded to the Advocate. If the Advocate does not consider the supporting references sufficient, the Advocate may ask the proposer(s) for additional ones.
6. Are the scholarly references sufficiently recent?
7. Does the proposed citation explain why the achievement was successful and impactful?
8. Does the proposed citation include important technical aspects of the achievement?
9. Is the proposed citation readable and understandable by the general public?
10. Will the citation be read correctly in the future by only using past tense? Does the citation wording avoid statements that read accurately only at the time that the proposal is written?
11. Does the proposed plaque site fulfill the requirements?
12. Is the proposal quality comparable to that of IEEE publications?
13. Are any scientific and technical units correct (e.g., km, mm, hertz, etc.)? Are acronyms correct and properly upper-cased or lower-cased? Are the letters in any acronym explained in the title or the citation?
14. Are date formats correct as specified in Section 6 of Milestones Program Guidelines? Helpful Hints on Citations, plaque locations
15. Do the year(s) appearing in the citation fall within the range of the year(s) included at the end of the title?
16. Note that it is the Advocate's responsibility to confirm that the independent reviewers have no conflict of interest (e.g., that they do not work for a company or a team involved in the achievement being proposed, that they have not published with the proposer(s), and have not worked on a project related to the funding of the achievement). An example of a way to check for this would be to search reviewers' publications on IEEE Xplore.

Reviewers’ Checklist

1. Is suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate?
2. Is evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Plaque Citation?
3. Does proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement?
4. Were there similar or competing achievements? If so, have the proposers adequately described these and their relationship to the achievement being proposed?
5. Have proposers shown a clear benefit to humanity?

In answering the questions above, the History Committee asks that reviewers apply a similar level of rigor to that used to peer-review an article, or evaluate a research proposal. Some elaboration is desirable. Of course the Committee would welcome any additional observations that you may have regarding this proposal.

Submission and Approval Log

Submitted date: 2 May 2025
Advocate approval date: 6 May 2025
History Committee approval date:
Board of Directors approval date:

Expert Review from Brian Randell -- Bberg (talk) 22:54, 2 May 2025 (UTC)

1. Is suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate?
Yes.

1a. Since the citation includes a person's name, does the evidence presented support this, and is this the only person who should be so included?
The several quoted contemporary documents provide ample evidence that Tommy Flowers is the one person who should be identified as responsible for Colossus.

2. Is evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Plaque Citation?
Yes. By now enough official documentation has been released, and carefully written analyses have been published, on Colossus and Flowers’ work, to provide ample support for the proposed wording of the Plaque Citation.

3. Does proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement?
Absolutely! The speed with which Tommy Flowers, and his team successfully designed and produced the Colossus range is still awesome, as are the range’s technical success and impact.

4. Were there similar or competing achievements? If so, have the proposers adequately described these and their relationship to the achievement being proposed?
The most similar competing achievement was ENIAC. The proposal provides a very good summary comparison of Colossus and ENIAC, and of the Atanasoff-Berry project.

5. Have proposers shown a clear benefit to humanity?
Bletchley Park’s Enigma and Colossus projects were very credibly assessed, by the Official Historian of British Intelligence in the Second World War (Professor Sir Harry Hinsley), as having helped to shorten the war by one or two years!

Short bio of Expert Reviewer
Brian Randell graduated in Mathematics from Imperial College, London, in 1957, and joined the English Electric Company where he and colleagues implemented the Whetstone KDF9 Algol compiler. From 1964-1969, he was with IBM in the United States, mainly at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, working on operating systems, the design of ultra-high speed computers, and computing system design methodology. With first Peter Naur and then John Buxton, he co-edited the two original NATO Software Engineering Reports. He then became Professor of Computing Science at Newcastle University, where in 1971 he set up the project that initiated research into the possibility of software fault tolerance.

He has been Principal Investigator on a succession of research projects in reliability and security funded by EPSRC, MoD, and the EU. Another, continuing, research interest has been the history of computing, especially the work of the Irish computer pioneer Percy Ludgate, and the Colossus Project. He has published over three hundred technical papers and reports, and is co-author or editor of eight books. He is now Emeritus Professor of Computing Science at Newcastle University. He is a Fellow of the BCS and the ACM, and was a Member of the Conseil Scientifique of the CNRS, France (2001-5), Chairman of the IEEE John von Neumann Medal Committee (2003-5), and a Member and then Chairman of the ACM A.M. Turing Award Committee (2005-9). He has received a D.Sc. from the University of London, and Honorary Doctorates from the University of Rennes, and the Institut National Polytechnique of Toulouse, France.

Expert Review from David A. Price -- Bberg (talk) 15:40, 4 May 2025 (UTC)

1. Is suggested wording of the Plaque Citation accurate?
Yes, the plaque citation is accurate.

1a. Since the citation includes a person's name, does the evidence presented support this, and is this the only person who should be so included?
Yes, it is appropriate that Tommy Flowers is named and that he is the only person named in this context. Mr. Flowers conceived this pioneering machine and was its lead designer.

2. Is evidence presented in the proposal of sufficient substance and accuracy to support the Plaque Citation?
Yes, the plaque citation is well supported by the evidence in the proposal.

3. Does proposed milestone represent a significant technical achievement?
Yes, the proposed milestone represents not only a significant achievement but an astonishing one for its time and circumstances.

4. Were there similar or competing achievements? If so, have the proposers adequately described these and their relationship to the achievement being proposed?
No, there were not any contemporaneous similar or competing achievements. As noted in the proposal, the most comparable machine in conceptual terms, ENIAC, post-dated Colossus by two years and was not ready until after World War II was over.

5. Have proposers shown a clear benefit to humanity?
Yes, the proposal accurately documents that the Colossus machines were highly valuable to the war effort of the Allies during World War II.

Short bio of Expert Reviewer
David A. Price was educated at the College of William and Mary, where he received his degree in computer science, and at Harvard University and the University of Cambridge. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.

His 2021 book on Colossus titled Geniuses at War: Bletchley Park, Colossus, and the Dawn of the Digital Age was recognized by the IEEE History Committee in 2022 with its IEEE William and Joyce Middleton Electrical Engineering History Award. His book The Pixar Touch: The Making of a Company was named a Wall Street Journal "Best Book of the Year," a Fast Company "Best Business Book of the Year," and a Library Journal "Best Business Book of the Year." His book Love and Hate in Jamestown was a New York Times "Notable Book of the Year."

Citation as originally submitted -- Administrator4 (talk) 19:33, 7 May 2025 (UTC)

The Colossus Computers, 1944-1945

Six Colossus codebreaking computers operated in this building in 1944-1945. Designed by Thomas H. Flowers of the British Post Office, they enabled deciphering of encrypted radio messages transmitted between German Commands across occupied Europe, Russia and North Africa. The resulting military intelligence saved countless lives, and was critical in shortening World War II. As the first successful large-scale computing application of digital electronics, Colossus anticipated subsequent computer developments.