Hi:
The Royal Mail has at last revealed details of their plans for a commemorative postage stamp featuring Colossus. I have known of this plan for some time as I was commissioned (in confidence) last year to write a section on Tommy Flowers for the chapter in the next Royal Mail Year Book about the new stamp series. (A rather brief press release by Royal Mail itself indicates that "each of the eight special stamps depict key inventions created by British inventors over the last century: Colossus, World Wide Web, Catseyes, Fibre Optics, Stainless Steel, Carbon Fibre, DNA Sequencing, i-limb" - see http://www.royalmail.com/personal/stamps-collectibles-gifts/look-forward-in….)
The attached picture and text in fact comes from a scanned copy of the February 2015 British Philatelic Bulletin, rather than directly from the Royal Mail., which I received today. I had not seen the design of the stamp before, so only now - to my annoyance - do I find that it describes Colossus as “the first electronic digital computer” - my own text takes care to use the phrase “the first programmable electronic digital computer”.
I have pointed out this problem to the Royal Mail, but have been told that it is too late for it to be corrected - the stamps are to be issued next month. (I have learned that the Royal Mail were given some rather poor advice, so I don’t blame them.)
However I am nevertheless delighted that Colossus is being commemorated by the Royal Mail, and by the growing public recognition especially here in the UK of Tommy Flowers’ great contribution.
Cheers
Brian Randell
[cid:658FA3BF-3CAE-483D-AECD-25F48014D3A1]
Hi
I’ve just received this on another mailing list. It looks interesting but I’ve not yet had time to read it carefully:
> http://steveblank.com/secret-history/
>
> The Secret History of Silicon Valley – Backstory
> • Part 1: The Vietnam War
> • Part 2: B-52’s and the Soviet Air Defense System
> • Part 3: Bill Perry/ESL and the Cold War
> • Part 4: Undisclosed Locations
> • Part 5: Silicon Valley, the 2nd 100 years
> • Part 6: Stanford, Terman and WWII
> • Part 7: Stanford, Terman and the Cold War
> • Part 8: Stanford and the rise of Cold War Entrepreneurship
> • Part 9: Stanford and Electronic Intelligence
> • Part 10: Stanford and Weapons Systems
> • Part 11: The Rise of Venture Capital
> • Part 12: The First Valley IPO’s
> • Part 13: Startups with Nuclear Missiles
> • Part 14: Spy Satellites in Silicon Valley
> • Part 15: Lockheed – Silicon Valley largest employer
> • Part 16: Balloon Wars
Cheers
Brian Randell
--
School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne,
NE1 7RU, UK
EMAIL = Brian.Randell(a)ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923
FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell
