Seventy-five years after construction of the first Colossus began, the 20 tools and tool bag that originally belonged to the late Henry (John) Cane and have been donated by his family are going on display alongside the museum’s rebuilt version of the pioneering computer.

The General Post Office engineer was a member of one of the dedicated teams that built and kept the Colossus computers running almost continuously at Bletchley Park from February 1944 until the end of the Second World War.

In December 1943, the first Colossus was being built and tested by Tommy Flowers and his colleagues at Dollis Hill, the London laboratories of the General Post Office. Flowers had taken the bold step of creating a machine with 1500 valves that could be programmed to run the code-breaking algorithms devised by the mathematician Bill Tutte.

The prototype is believed to have had its first successful trial run on 8 December 1943. Later that month, or possibly in January 1944, it was moved to Bletchley Park where it was reassembled and broke its first Lorenz message on 5 February.

By the end of the war, ten Colossus machines were running around the clock, operated by Wrens (members of the Women’s Royal Naval Service) and maintained by teams of engineers like John Cane. The tools they used were designed for use in Strowger analogue telephone exchanges but became critical to the war effort because Tommy Flowers, a telephone engineer by training, built Colossus mostly with the telecommunications components that were familiar and available to him.

Phil Hayes, who maintains the rebuilt Colossus at TNMOC, said, “I use tools like John Cane’s almost every day to keep the Colossus rebuild running, but these originals are very precious. My favourite is a specialist 28-inch long screwdriver with a sleeve that is used on the plug boards and lamp strips. We are very grateful to the Cane family for their donation.”

The National Museum of Computing, located in Block H at the Bletchley Park site, is an independent charity housing the world’s largest collection of functional historic computers, including reconstructions of the wartime code-breaking Colossus and the Bombe, and the WITCH, the world’s oldest working digital computer.

The museum plans to hold several events during 2019 to mark the anniversary of Colossus going into operation. In April, it expects to complete reconstruction work on Colossus’s predecessor, the ‘Heath Robinson machine’, while May will mark 75 years since the development of Colossus Mark II, which arrived in time to provide vital intelligence at the time of the D-Day landings.

Seventy-five years after construction of the first Colossus began, the 20 tools and tool bag that originally belonged to the late Henry (John) Cane and have been donated by his family are going on display alongside the museum’s rebuilt version of the pioneering computer.

The General Post Office engineer was a member of one of the dedicated teams that built and kept the Colossus computers running almost continuously at Bletchley Park from February 1944 until the end of the Second World War.

In December 1943, the first Colossus was being built and tested by Tommy Flowers and his colleagues at Dollis Hill, the London laboratories of the General Post Office. Flowers had taken the bold step of creating a machine with 1500 valves that could be programmed to run the code-breaking algorithms devised by the mathematician Bill Tutte.

The prototype is believed to have had its first successful trial run on 8 December 1943. Later that month, or possibly in January 1944, it was moved to Bletchley Park where it was reassembled and broke its first Lorenz message on 5 February.

By the end of the war, ten Colossus machines were running around the clock, operated by Wrens (members of the Women’s Royal Naval Service) and maintained by teams of engineers like John Cane. The tools they used were designed for use in Strowger analogue telephone exchanges but became critical to the war effort because Tommy Flowers, a telephone engineer by training, built Colossus mostly with the telecommunications components that were familiar and available to him.

Phil Hayes, who maintains the rebuilt Colossus at TNMOC, said, “I use tools like John Cane’s almost every day to keep the Colossus rebuild running, but these originals are very precious. My favourite is a specialist 28-inch long screwdriver with a sleeve that is used on the plug boards and lamp strips. We are very grateful to the Cane family for their donation.”

The National Museum of Computing, located in Block H at the Bletchley Park site, is an independent charity housing the world’s largest collection of functional historic computers, including reconstructions of the wartime code-breaking Colossus and the Bombe, and the WITCH, the world’s oldest working digital computer.

The museum plans to hold several events during 2019 to mark the anniversary of Colossus going into operation. In April, it expects to complete reconstruction work on Colossus’s predecessor, the ‘Heath Robinson machine’, while May will mark 75 years since the development of Colossus Mark II, which arrived in time to provide vital intelligence at the time of the D-Day landings.