Colossus reborn

I read in the news today that a computer capable of working through 63 million calculations per second has been unveiled in Edinburgh. The machine will, according to the report, help scientists ‘develop life-saving drugs and model climate change and epidemic patterns.’

Getting machines tackle highly complex problems is nothing new. During the Second World War the British created ‘Colossus’ - a huge calculating device that was aimed at cracking the German’s ‘Fish’ ciphers. Whilst the use of Colossus was most famously associated with Alan Turing other pioneers of this kind include Charles Babbage, Konrad Zuse and John von Neumann.

Learn more here:

http://www.computerhistory.org/about/