[SIGCIS-Members] Tommy Flowers

Wed Oct 22 09:56:09 PDT 2025

I won't comment on the main thrust of this thread, but I do want to mention that, like Tom, I also visited Bletchley for the first time last June, and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I wrote a Substack post on my impressions, which you can read here:
https://substack.com/@paulceruzzi/p-165584637

However... ( and you knew this was coming)...I was enjoying a docent's talk about the Bombe, but when I made a comment about Joe Desch, they not only did not know who he was, but they were unaware of the role of National Cash Register in Dayton, Ohio, where a number of "Bombes" were built. (another of many problems I have with the Imitation Game movie).

See the NSA tribute to Desch.
https://www.nsa.gov/History/Cryptologic-History/Historical-Figures/Historical-Figures-View/Article/1621573/joseph-desch/#:~:text=The%20Bombes%20Mr.,After%20the%20war%2C%20Mr.
________________________________
From: Members <members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org> on behalf of thomas.haigh--- via Members <members at lists.sigcis.org>
Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2025 12:31 PM
To: members at sigcis.org <members at sigcis.org>
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Tommy Flowers

External Email - Exercise Caution

Thanks James and Brian,

You are stimulating me to write a little more! The famous for being forgotten thing was a central thread in my CACM article “Innovators Assemble” prompted by the odd spectacle of Walter Isaacson claiming to rescue Ada Lovelace and the Women of ENIAC from obscurity. https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/innovators-assemble/ It obviously depends on where you set the benchmark for obscurity, and as Isaacson has spent his career writing about the most famous men in history probably anyone who isn’t Steve Jobs. Elon Musk, or Benjamin Franklin barely registers.

Once Jeremy Clarkson has fronted a documentary about you, complete with historical reenactment, perhaps you are not forgotten anymore. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTsHnxS5bg0 This appears to be a different documentary from the one James linked to, which gives you a sense of how large the story has come to loom.

I like the “loan genius tax”. It’s true that the article is less in thrall to this narrative than the framing but there are subtle ways in which the standard version of the story skews things towards the template of the heroic outsider fighting blinkered elites. Anyone who cares about this can compare the narrative here to our discussion in “Contextualizing Colossus” but the archival evidence for Colossus having being opposed by Newman or even Welshman at Bletchley Park is weak. We found the idea that development of the Robinson machines was part of an incremental and coordinated program towards the development of Colossus much more convincing than the conventional story that Colossus was a rival project conducted in secret. Here, as with other versions of the standard narrative, the timeline isn’t compatible with archival evidence. Specifically, Smith’s suggestion that “ten months of working around the clock” on Colossus started in “February 1943” from a decision made “in response” to having “improved Newman’s design for Heath Robinson and overs[een] its manufacture” just don’t fit with any possible arrangement of dates on a calendar.

At least the Guardian article doesn’t repeat claims that Flowers paid for Colossus materials himself, or that he later sought a small business loan from the bank of England to build ”another machine like Colossus” which is utterly absurd for many reasons but still features on his Wikpedia pages. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tommy_Flowers Even if you assume that Flowers saw a potential market for startup companies selling cryptanalytic equipment there’s the problem of seeking a small business loan from a central bank.  I suppose whoever wrote this thought the Bank of England was something like the Bank of America.

The other historical box Flowers is being forced into here is “father of the computer.” As well as the general problems with this title, there’s a special irony that Flowers didn’t care about computers. For example, Smith mentions that Turing had an unfair advantage in becoming famous because “Turing went to the National Physical Laboratory in London, where he built the most sophisticated computer of the immediate postwar years, the ACE.” But, as we document in the IEEE Annals biography of Flowers, a contract to build ACE was given to Flowers’ group at Dollis Hill after the war but they finished up backing out of it to work on telephone exchanges. Flowers also seems to have played some part in the MOSAIC computer project, which provided another possible but untaken path into a computing career. We somehow find it hard to believe that a telephone engineer wanted to build communications systems rather than computers. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8356180

I do feel that Colossus itself has similarly been shoehorned into the box of “first computer” as a result of coming to light during the 1970s thanks to the efforts of Brian Randell (who notably goes unmentioned in Smith’s piece) just as history of computing was emerging as a field of study. At that point integrating it into the developing conversation about the “first computer” was the obvious and only way to argue for its historical importance. Also because primary sources describing its capabilities were still not available much vagueness remained around its actual capabilities. We argued in “Colossus and Programmability” that it wasn’t a programmable computer, but something more like a configurable digital signal processor. This makes it easier to understand why Flowers didn’t try to move into computing after the war.

Though there was more than that going on because Colossus was digital and Flowers’ later career was marked by a determination to stick with analog electronics for telephone exchanges. I also talk about that in the Flowers biography. Flowers himself noted the “irony of recent events which credit me with some pioneering work on computers, when it was my refusal to use a computer when everyone else said it was the right thing to do that which led to my downfall in the telephone industry.” So Flowers very much did not, as Smith claimed, attempt “to persuade the Post Office to modernise with the technology he pioneered.”

Flowers was unmistakably bitter about the way his postwar career went and shared this with interviewers, in ways that sometimes distorted what happened during the war into a story of blanket resistance to electronics. Methodologically, an issue that comes up here and in other places where we brush up against entrenched narratives is the proper use of oral history. I’ve been struck here, and more so in my work on ENIAC and with computer scientists, by the general assumption that statements from the people involved (or even from people who knew them) are the most reliable evidence, even when recorded forty or fifty years later. So the benefits of history based on archival primary sources seems to be less obvious than we might hope. Smith himself put more weight on a phone conversation with an elderly niece than on professional scholarship and apparently did not come across the biography in Annals.

Best wishes,

Tom

Thomas Haigh

Professor & Chair, UWM History Department

Chair, IEEE Computer Society History Committee

Director, ACM History Committee Turing Awards Project

See more at www.tomandmaria.com/Tom<http://www.tomandmaria.com/Tom>

From: Members <members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org<mailto:members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org>> On Behalf Of James Sumner via Members
Sent: Tuesday, October 21, 2025 3:20 AM
To: members at lists.sigcis.org<mailto:members at lists.sigcis.org>
Subject: Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Tommy Flowers

The "forgotten hero" trope is interesting. It's a good media hook, and it doesn't obey common logic. Very often, publicising a "forgotten hero" doesn't force a revision of the perceived forgotten-ness, but actually intensifies it.

This effect can't go on indefinitely, but its limits are only occasionally reached: Alan Turing is an example. Since The Imitation Game came out in 2014, the narrative "once forgotten, now recognised" has become dominant. Yet I remember there were still "forgotten" narratives appearing as late as the centenary commemorations in 2012, at which point Turing was already one of the most famous scientific figures in history.

Tommy Flowers, who was honoured in his lifetime and has received about as many formal tributes and commemorations as any other important innovator in his home country, looks set to remain one of the famous forgotten. It's not a case of being known to specialists but not the general public: he makes a good public hero, fitting the narrative of skilled working man made good that was laid down in Dava Sobel's Longitude, and it's usually for general audiences that his significance is being newly discovered at any given date.

Notably, he was – alongside Bill Tutte, likewise a permanent revelation – the subject of a 2011 BBC documentary on "Bletchley Park's Lost Heroes<https://clp.bbcrewind.co.uk/7fd3fb55e462db0867b183729c5ed27c>". The comment here (#17)<https://www.bbc.co.uk/webarchive/https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.co.uk%2Fblogs%2Ftv%2F2011%2F10%2Fww2-documentaries-agent-zigzag-dambusters.shtml> from a 2011 viewer describing it as "a better-late-than-never tribute" sums up the general air of a historical wrong finally righted.

The odd thing is that the new piece by Andrew Smith<https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/12/move-over-alan-turing-meet-the-working-class-hero-of-bletchley-park-you-didnt-see-in-the-movies> that re-rights this wrong is, for most of its length, relatively attentive to the scale and complexity of the project and the inappropriateness of "lone hero" judgments. With two or three exceptions, the problematic framing is confined to the first two paragraphs – though these, of course, are what prime the reader's response. It sometimes feels like the "forgotten hero" hook is a tax writers pay in order to be allowed to deliver the detail.

I was interested to see a letter from Jonathan Michie<https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/17/the-teamwork-behind-bletchley-parks-colossus-computer>, son of Donald, responding to Smith's piece. He points out – as is also clear from the piece shared by Morten – that Flowers himself framed innovation as a group and incremental effort, and ties this understanding to a defence of broad humanistic education against the "relevant skills only" approach, which certainly relies on the assumption that heroic innovators Just Are.

Best
James

On 20/10/2025 21:08, Morten Bay via Members wrote:

Just adding this to Thomas's list, in case someone less steeped in this particular history joins later and wants even more sources.

Here are Flowers' own words on the subject from 1983 (IEEE is down right now, likely due to the AWS outage):

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/5488650/4640706/04640709.pdf [ieeexplore.ieee.org]<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/ieeexplore.ieee.org/iel5/5488650/4640706/04640709.pdf__;!!PDiH4ENfjr2_Jw!F21idSc2gdmfspE5FUyXNBtNdMu6hQ9KxNbtJxC-ECLoGEJlX3Egazh8hrGW9kIuet3tm7k59XA0JX6ItvIxfGK2FNF-QQ$>

/Morten

Morten Bay, Ph.D.

Lecturer

Research fellow, Center for the Digital Future

Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism

University of Southern California

On Oct 20, 2025 at 12:56 PM -0700, thomas.haigh--- via Members <members at lists.sigcis.org><mailto:members at lists.sigcis.org>, wrote:

The Guardian piece is nicely written, but I sighed a little to see another retelling of the story that adds nothing new. There’s also something ironic in attempting to challenge the long genius myth of Turing by squeezing Flowers himself into

The Guardian piece is nicely written, but I sighed a little to see another retelling of the story that adds nothing new. There’s also something ironic in attempting to challenge the long genius myth of Turing by squeezing Flowers himself into the lone genius narrative template as “the real father of computing.”

So as a PSA for the work I did a few years ago with Mark Priestley on this topic, those looking to learn more might consult:

  1.  Contextualizing Colossus. That’s the organizational side of the story in Technology & Culture, based in the archival materials, focused on the relationship between Bletchley Park and Dollis Hill. The clearest effort to pull back from individuals to look at this as an institutional relationship. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/763592<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/muse.jhu.edu/article/763592__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!uNOcMVJs9rathWpIiGQHwn6FsR-I3hUTvgyR8xG6xHVUQAV4CjsiCg7GhO8Z_cJ2GVEGlRTQSsHqSh8elCch$>
  2.  Colossus and Programmability. From IEEE Annals, this one digs in to the questions of whether Colossus was programmable and whether it was a computer. There’s a British stamp that says it was both, but we conclude it was neither. But we couldn’t find an existing definition of “programmable” so we had to grapple with what that even meant at the time. https://www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/an/2018/04/08509146/17D45WgziNe<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.computer.org/csdl/magazine/an/2018/04/08509146/17D45WgziNe__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!uNOcMVJs9rathWpIiGQHwn6FsR-I3hUTvgyR8xG6xHVUQAV4CjsiCg7GhO8Z_cJ2GVEGlRTQSsHqSgt11rdJ$>
  3.  Tommy Flowers biography from IEEE Annals. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8356180<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/8356180__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!uNOcMVJs9rathWpIiGQHwn6FsR-I3hUTvgyR8xG6xHVUQAV4CjsiCg7GhO8Z_cJ2GVEGlRTQSsHqSlAYKXzT$>
  4.  Colossus Genius: Tutte, Flowers, and a Bad Imitation of Turing. One of the my CACM contributions, written in a more general way and also taking aim at the Imitation Game movie. https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3018994<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3018994__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!uNOcMVJs9rathWpIiGQHwn6FsR-I3hUTvgyR8xG6xHVUQAV4CjsiCg7GhO8Z_cJ2GVEGlRTQSsHqStUPVAWp$>
  5.  Colossus the Missing Manual. That’s the technical report with the in-depth description of the Colossus architecture, its sequence of operations and what all the controls did. There are also several documented Colossus configurations. https://mediarep.org/entities/book/f1548ef2-2420-4c93-9b09-4fadcc847bd3<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/mediarep.org/entities/book/f1548ef2-2420-4c93-9b09-4fadcc847bd3__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!uNOcMVJs9rathWpIiGQHwn6FsR-I3hUTvgyR8xG6xHVUQAV4CjsiCg7GhO8Z_cJ2GVEGlRTQSsHqSvHmb_I4$>

Perhaps unsurprisingly the world mostly shrugged at these and went on with the ritual retelling of the story of snubbed genius. It was nice, though, making my first visit to Bletchley Park earlier this year to have the chance to introduce myself to the volunteer Colossus operators who turned out to have been making extensive use of the Missing Manual. Rather a specialized audience, but a committed one!

Best wishes,

Tom

Thomas Haigh

Professor & Chair, UWM History Department

Chair, IEEE Computer Society History Committee

Director, ACM History Committee Turing Awards Project

See more at www.tomandmaria.com/Tom<https://urldefense.com/v3/__http:/www.tomandmaria.com/Tom__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!uNOcMVJs9rathWpIiGQHwn6FsR-I3hUTvgyR8xG6xHVUQAV4CjsiCg7GhO8Z_cJ2GVEGlRTQSsHqSgRgMYXa$>

From: Members <members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org><mailto:members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org> On Behalf Of Dag Spicer via Members
Sent: Monday, October 20, 2025 12:49 PM
To: members at lists.sigcis.org<mailto:members at lists.sigcis.org>
Subject: [SIGCIS-Members] Tommy Flowers

A great story… Flowers’ career was full of brilliant inventions.

<image001.jpg>

Move over, Alan Turing: meet the working-class hero of Bletchley Park you didn’t see in the movies<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/12/move-over-alan-turing-meet-the-working-class-hero-of-bletchley-park-you-didnt-see-in-the-movies__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!uNOcMVJs9rathWpIiGQHwn6FsR-I3hUTvgyR8xG6xHVUQAV4CjsiCg7GhO8Z_cJ2GVEGlRTQSsHqSt_1EG6a$>

theguardian.com<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.theguardian.com/world/2025/oct/12/move-over-alan-turing-meet-the-working-class-hero-of-bletchley-park-you-didnt-see-in-the-movies__;!!LIr3w8kk_Xxm!uNOcMVJs9rathWpIiGQHwn6FsR-I3hUTvgyR8xG6xHVUQAV4CjsiCg7GhO8Z_cJ2GVEGlRTQSsHqSt_1EG6a$>

Dag

-----
Dag Spicer
Senior Curator
Computer History Museum
Editorial Board, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing
ACM History Committee
1401 N. Shoreline Blvd.
Mountain View CA  94043

“History is a vast early warning system.”

— Norman Cousins, American journalist (1915-1990).

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