We here at the University of London Computer Centre (ULCC), organisers of the annual FOTE conference and one of the leading IT service providers to the UK education sector, understand the importance the Colossus, the world’s first electronic, programmable computer.
Its main duty was to crack the German High Command code during World War 2. It carried out complex statistical analysis on messages at a rate of 5,000 characters per second. The National Museum of Computing (TNMOC) is fundraising to rebuild the Colossus at Bletchley Park, which was the first place to use the code breaking machine in 1943. TNMOC are asking individuals and companies to donate through their JustGiving page or by buying pixels on a picture of a war time code breaking machine on Colossusonline.org.
Google produced the short video below to celebrate Colossus and those who built it, in particular Tommy Flowers.
“History teaches everything including the future.” – Alphonse de Lamartine
We are keen to raise awareness for the Colossus project and Bletchley Park and support a good cause and ULCC will donate £1 (up to a maximum of £500) for each time this post is shared on social networks. Making a donation is easy, all you have to do is share this post by using the social sharing options below.
To help spread the word about the Colossus fundraising initiative and Bletchley Park why not use one of the examples below or feel free to make up your own, just make sure you use the #colossus and #bletchleypark hashtag when you share the post for it to be counted.
“This tweet raised £1 for the #colossus project at #bletchleypark. Help raise more at: http://bit.ly/Hr5nOU”
“I’ve just supported the #colossus initiative at #bletchleypark. You can too, it’s simplez: http://bit.ly/Hr5nOU”
So get tweeting and sharing, the more you do the more money we will donate. We are planning to run the fundraising campaign until 30th of April 31st May until we reach 500 shares.
We here at ULCC would like to say a big thank you to everyone who has already shared this blog post for Colossus at Bletchley Park. So far, you have helped raise over £180 and we hope that this number continues to grow over the next few weeks.
Find out more about the recreation of the Colossus here: http://www.tnmoc.org/36/section.aspx/237
We’ve reached over £200!
Please continue to share to help us reach our £500 goal.