Re: [SIGCIS-Members] Royal Mail issues Colossus stamp
Hi: The Royal Mail’s own press release about their Colossus stamp is now at last available, at: http://www.royalmailgroup.com/royal-mail-commemorates-colossus-giant-achieve... The summary section of its text is as follows:
• Royal Mail has issued a stamp to commemorate Colossus - the world’s first electronic, digital and programmable computer. This is part of the Inventive Britain Special Stamps issued on 19 February 2015 • The stamps are on sale now from Royal Mail by phone on 03457 641 641 or from www.royalmail.com/inventivebritain and available from 8,000 Post Offices nationwide • The Colossus machine was designed and built by General Post Office (GPO) employee Tommy Flowers MBE and his team at the GPO Research Station in Dollis Hill, north-west London, during the Second World War to decipher messages being sent between German High Command • These messages used a more advanced cipher machine, called Lorenz, than those from the Enigma machine that Alan Turing OBE decoded using his Bombe machine • The first Colossus machine was completed in December 1943 and it became operational at Bletchley Park in February 1944. A total of 10 machines were in use by the end of the war • Most of the original machines were dismantled after the war, and all involved with Colossus were sworn to secrecy under the Official Secrets Act. • Full information was only declassified by the British Government in 2000, two years after Flowers’ death in October 1998 • A fully functioning rebuild of Colossus was completed in 2007. It is now on display in The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park • The site of the old GPO Research Station was converted into flats, and has an access road named Flowers Close in honour of Tommy Flowers
Cheers Brian Randell -- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell
Brian thanks for sharing this. For those of us who have been looking at the history of computing for 30-40 years, the issuance of a stamp commemorating an historical computer must seem like quite a marker about how far we have come in recognizing the topic. Certainly when some of us started getting interested in the history of computing, we only knew in the briefest of terms that the British had computing in WWII and, of course, the more evident ENIAC project underway in the US. And today we have movies, stamps, computer museums, prize winning history books, journals--it is all quite amazing. It is all now so visible. I guess now it is the turn of the US Postal Service to issue a stamp? ENIAC? PC? Herman Hollerith? On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 5:59 AM, Brian Randell < brian.randell@newcastle.ac.uk> wrote:
Hi:
The Royal Mail’s own press release about their Colossus stamp is now at last available, at:
http://www.royalmailgroup.com/royal-mail-commemorates-colossus-giant-achieve...
The summary section of its text is as follows:
• Royal Mail has issued a stamp to commemorate Colossus - the
world’s first electronic, digital and programmable computer. This is part of the Inventive Britain Special Stamps issued on 19 February 2015
• The stamps are on sale now from Royal Mail by phone on 03457 641
641 or from www.royalmail.com/inventivebritain and available from 8,000 Post Offices nationwide
• The Colossus machine was designed and built by General Post
Office (GPO) employee Tommy Flowers MBE and his team at the GPO Research Station in Dollis Hill, north-west London, during the Second World War to decipher messages being sent between German High Command
• These messages used a more advanced cipher machine, called
Lorenz, than those from the Enigma machine that Alan Turing OBE decoded using his Bombe machine
• The first Colossus machine was completed in December 1943 and it
became operational at Bletchley Park in February 1944. A total of 10 machines were in use by the end of the war
• Most of the original machines were dismantled after the war, and
all involved with Colossus were sworn to secrecy under the Official Secrets Act.
• Full information was only declassified by the British Government
in 2000, two years after Flowers’ death in October 1998
• A fully functioning rebuild of Colossus was completed in 2007.
It is now on display in The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park
• The site of the old GPO Research Station was converted into
flats, and has an access road named Flowers Close in honour of Tommy Flowers
Cheers
Brian Randell
-- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- James W. Cortada Senior Research Fellow Charles Babbage Institute University of Minnesota jcortada@umn.edu 608-274-6382
Hi James: On 20 Feb 2015, at 13:51, jcortada University of Minnesota <jcortada@umn.edu> wrote:
Brian thanks for sharing this. For those of us who have been looking at the history of computing for 30-40 years, the issuance of a stamp commemorating an historical computer must seem like quite a marker about how far we have come in recognizing the topic. Certainly when some of us started getting interested in the history of computing, we only knew in the briefest of terms that the British had computing in WWII and, of course, the more evident ENIAC project underway in the US. And today we have movies, stamps, computer museums, prize winning history books, journals--it is all quite amazing. It is all now so visible.
I guess now it is the turn of the US Postal Service to issue a stamp? ENIAC? PC? Herman Hollerith?
All the above! :-) Cheers Brian
On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 5:59 AM, Brian Randell <brian.randell@newcastle.ac.uk> wrote: Hi:
The Royal Mail’s own press release about their Colossus stamp is now at last available, at:
http://www.royalmailgroup.com/royal-mail-commemorates-colossus-giant-achieve...
The summary section of its text is as follows:
• Royal Mail has issued a stamp to commemorate Colossus - the world’s first electronic, digital and programmable computer. This is part of the Inventive Britain Special Stamps issued on 19 February 2015 • The stamps are on sale now from Royal Mail by phone on 03457 641 641 or from www.royalmail.com/inventivebritain and available from 8,000 Post Offices nationwide • The Colossus machine was designed and built by General Post Office (GPO) employee Tommy Flowers MBE and his team at the GPO Research Station in Dollis Hill, north-west London, during the Second World War to decipher messages being sent between German High Command • These messages used a more advanced cipher machine, called Lorenz, than those from the Enigma machine that Alan Turing OBE decoded using his Bombe machine • The first Colossus machine was completed in December 1943 and it became operational at Bletchley Park in February 1944. A total of 10 machines were in use by the end of the war • Most of the original machines were dismantled after the war, and all involved with Colossus were sworn to secrecy under the Official Secrets Act. • Full information was only declassified by the British Government in 2000, two years after Flowers’ death in October 1998 • A fully functioning rebuild of Colossus was completed in 2007. It is now on display in The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park • The site of the old GPO Research Station was converted into flats, and has an access road named Flowers Close in honour of Tommy Flowers
Cheers
Brian Randell
-- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- James W. Cortada Senior Research Fellow Charles Babbage Institute University of Minnesota jcortada@umn.edu 608-274-6382
-- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell
On Feb 20, 2015, at 4:15 PM, Brian Randell <brian.randell@newcastle.ac.uk> wrote:
Hi James:
On 20 Feb 2015, at 13:51, jcortada University of Minnesota <jcortada@umn.edu> wrote:
Brian thanks for sharing this. For those of us who have been looking at the history of computing for 30-40 years, the issuance of a stamp commemorating an historical computer must seem like quite a marker about how far we have come in recognizing the topic. Certainly when some of us started getting interested in the history of computing, we only knew in the briefest of terms that the British had computing in WWII and, of course, the more evident ENIAC project underway in the US. And today we have movies, stamps, computer museums, prize winning history books, journals--it is all quite amazing. It is all now so visible.
I guess now it is the turn of the US Postal Service to issue a stamp? ENIAC? PC? Herman Hollerith?
All the above! :-)
austria published a special stamp for heinz zemanek some years ago. corresponds to the value of 0.55€ cheers, mariann
Cheers
Brian
On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 5:59 AM, Brian Randell <brian.randell@newcastle.ac.uk> wrote: Hi:
The Royal Mail’s own press release about their Colossus stamp is now at last available, at:
http://www.royalmailgroup.com/royal-mail-commemorates-colossus-giant-achieve...
The summary section of its text is as follows:
• Royal Mail has issued a stamp to commemorate Colossus - the world’s first electronic, digital and programmable computer. This is part of the Inventive Britain Special Stamps issued on 19 February 2015 • The stamps are on sale now from Royal Mail by phone on 03457 641 641 or from www.royalmail.com/inventivebritain and available from 8,000 Post Offices nationwide • The Colossus machine was designed and built by General Post Office (GPO) employee Tommy Flowers MBE and his team at the GPO Research Station in Dollis Hill, north-west London, during the Second World War to decipher messages being sent between German High Command • These messages used a more advanced cipher machine, called Lorenz, than those from the Enigma machine that Alan Turing OBE decoded using his Bombe machine • The first Colossus machine was completed in December 1943 and it became operational at Bletchley Park in February 1944. A total of 10 machines were in use by the end of the war • Most of the original machines were dismantled after the war, and all involved with Colossus were sworn to secrecy under the Official Secrets Act. • Full information was only declassified by the British Government in 2000, two years after Flowers’ death in October 1998 • A fully functioning rebuild of Colossus was completed in 2007. It is now on display in The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park • The site of the old GPO Research Station was converted into flats, and has an access road named Flowers Close in honour of Tommy Flowers
Cheers
Brian Randell
-- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- James W. Cortada Senior Research Fellow Charles Babbage Institute University of Minnesota jcortada@umn.edu 608-274-6382
-- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
Hi: OK - Here’s some more computer-related commemorative stamps from the Royal Mail http://www.collectgbstamps.co.uk/explore/issues/?issue=9 - Information Technology (two stamps) - 1982 http://www.collectgbstamps.co.uk/explore/issues/?issue=21 - Charles Babbage - 1991 http://www.collectgbstamps.co.uk/explore/issues/?issue=234 - Alan Turing - 1999 http://www.collectgbstamps.co.uk/explore/issues/?issue=22514 - Charles Babbage - 2010 http://www.collectgbstamps.co.uk/explore/issues/?issue=22622 - Alan Turing - 2012 I’ll leave any further searching to philatelists! Cheers Brian Randell On 20 Feb 2015, at 15:30, mariann unterluggauer <mariann@nomatic.org> wrote:
On Feb 20, 2015, at 4:15 PM, Brian Randell <brian.randell@newcastle.ac.uk> wrote:
Hi James:
On 20 Feb 2015, at 13:51, jcortada University of Minnesota <jcortada@umn.edu> wrote:
Brian thanks for sharing this. For those of us who have been looking at the history of computing for 30-40 years, the issuance of a stamp commemorating an historical computer must seem like quite a marker about how far we have come in recognizing the topic. Certainly when some of us started getting interested in the history of computing, we only knew in the briefest of terms that the British had computing in WWII and, of course, the more evident ENIAC project underway in the US. And today we have movies, stamps, computer museums, prize winning history books, journals--it is all quite amazing. It is all now so visible.
I guess now it is the turn of the US Postal Service to issue a stamp? ENIAC? PC? Herman Hollerith?
All the above! :-)
austria published a special stamp for heinz zemanek some years ago. corresponds to the value of 0.55€
cheers, mariann
Cheers
Brian
On Fri, Feb 20, 2015 at 5:59 AM, Brian Randell <brian.randell@newcastle.ac.uk> wrote: Hi:
The Royal Mail’s own press release about their Colossus stamp is now at last available, at:
http://www.royalmailgroup.com/royal-mail-commemorates-colossus-giant-achieve...
The summary section of its text is as follows:
• Royal Mail has issued a stamp to commemorate Colossus - the world’s first electronic, digital and programmable computer. This is part of the Inventive Britain Special Stamps issued on 19 February 2015 • The stamps are on sale now from Royal Mail by phone on 03457 641 641 or from www.royalmail.com/inventivebritain and available from 8,000 Post Offices nationwide • The Colossus machine was designed and built by General Post Office (GPO) employee Tommy Flowers MBE and his team at the GPO Research Station in Dollis Hill, north-west London, during the Second World War to decipher messages being sent between German High Command • These messages used a more advanced cipher machine, called Lorenz, than those from the Enigma machine that Alan Turing OBE decoded using his Bombe machine • The first Colossus machine was completed in December 1943 and it became operational at Bletchley Park in February 1944. A total of 10 machines were in use by the end of the war • Most of the original machines were dismantled after the war, and all involved with Colossus were sworn to secrecy under the Official Secrets Act. • Full information was only declassified by the British Government in 2000, two years after Flowers’ death in October 1998 • A fully functioning rebuild of Colossus was completed in 2007. It is now on display in The National Museum of Computing at Bletchley Park • The site of the old GPO Research Station was converted into flats, and has an access road named Flowers Close in honour of Tommy Flowers
Cheers
Brian Randell
-- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- James W. Cortada Senior Research Fellow Charles Babbage Institute University of Minnesota jcortada@umn.edu 608-274-6382
-- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
_______________________________________________ This email is relayed from members@sigcis.org, the email discussion list of SHOT SIGCIS. Opinions expressed here are those of the member posting and are not reviewed, edited, or endorsed by SIGCIS. The list archives are at http://sigcis.org/pipermail/members/ and you can change your subscription options at http://sigcis.org/mailman/listinfo/members
-- School of Computing Science, Newcastle University, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 7RU, UK EMAIL = Brian.Randell@ncl.ac.uk PHONE = +44 191 208 7923 FAX = +44 191 208 8232 URL = http://www.cs.ncl.ac.uk/people/brian.randell
participants (3)
-
Brian Randell -
jcortada University of Minnesota -
mariann unterluggauer