Your PC might be cool, but it'll never be Colossus—an 80-year-old beast as tall as a person that could 'read Hitler's mind'

HardwareYour PC might be cool, but it’ll never be Colossus—an 80-year-old beast as tall as a person that could ‘read Hitler’s mind’When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: The National Archives (United Kingdom), FO850/234.)

Annotated photographs of the COLOSSUS electronic digital computer - The National Archives (United Kingdom).

The United Kingdom’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) has unveiledfurther details about Colossus, often referred to as “the first ever digital computer”, for its 80th birthday. A machine which—as thisobituaryto an MI5 chief scientific officer who helped rebuild it states—could “read Hitler’s mind”.

It should be noted that Colossus wasn’t just one computer, but an array of them. Designed to help decode teleprinter messages, the Colossus wasconsidered to be"the first [computer] that was digital, programmable, and electronic", though it wasn’t able to store programs—that had to be done via physical switches and plugs. So no, you probably can’t run Doom on it.

Instead, encrypted messages were fed into the Colossus via paper tape, whichit could readat “5000 characters per second”. In terms of the computer’s specs, rings of neon gas valves that could store a whopping 1 bit of information were “arranged in precise numbers to mimic the wheels of the Lorenz encryption machine … once the pattern of ones and zeros on the wheels were known, these could be stored in the thyratron rings and used to find the correct settings for several messages.” SSDs, eat your heart out.

What’s most fascinating to me are the logic gates. In case you’re not aware, computers use logic gates for a lot of their more complicated functions. These gates can output a zero or a one (think binary code), and are chained together to perform more complex tasks.

The Colossus had these, but they weren’t built out of electronic circuits—they were built out ofvacuum tubes, which allowed a current to pass from a cathode to an anode in a vacuum: 2,500 of them, to be precise. Their use was actually widespread for a while, in radio, television, radar, and sound recording.

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So when you’re sat there, tinkering with graphics settings to squeeze out an extra frame or two from your high-end rig: the grandfather of programmable digital computers was a two-meter tall beast, programmed with switches and neon gas and fed instructions with paper.

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