What does ENIAC stand for?
Although many people think the American ‘ENIAC’ was the first programmable, electronic computer (operational in 1947), it actually was the British ‘Colossus’ (operational in early 1944). A brilliant young telephone engineer at the Post Office Research Station in London named Tommy Flowers designed an electronic computer named Colossus to aid in the decoding effort of German radio messages in World War II coded on the Enigma machine. Colossus used 1,500 valves (vacuum tubes) and an optical paper tape reader operating at a read speed of 5,000 characters a second (which was about 30 miles an hour) and began operating five months before D-Day. A total of 10 Colossus computers were built, the design being improved and upgraded throughout the rest of the war. The Ultra project was kept secret until the mid-1970s, when the 30-year rule allowed its release. This secrecy is why many people think the American ENIAC was the first programmable, electronic computer. Although all 10 Colossus compute
