The Engineer They Erased: Tommy Flowers and the Pioneering of Electronic Codebreaking

A forgotten engineer built the room that thought. 🗂️ In 1944, Tommy Flowers wired thousands of valves into “Colossus,” the first large-scale electronic codebreaker—quietly turning German high command’s secrets into Allied decisions. This documentary traces the skepticism, the breakthrough, and the decades of silence that followed. 🔧📜

What you’ll see:
• How Lorenz (“Tunny”) worked—and why hand methods failed.
• Why “valves can’t be trusted” was a myth—and how Flowers proved it.
• From Heath Robinson to Colossus: the invisible turn that changed D-Day planning.
• Why Britain dismantled the machines and buried the credit.

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Timestamps
00:00 Hook — frost, tape, and the switch
01:12 The problem: Lorenz (“Tunny”) at scale
03:06 Heath Robinson: theory vs. torn paper
04:42 Enter Tommy Flowers (Dollis Hill)
06:10 “Thousands of valves?” — the bet on reliability
08:02 Colossus I: build, heat, and first failures
10:15 The invisible turn: electronic phase-shift wins
12:18 From peaks to plaintext: operations impact
14:05 Myth-busting: Enigma vs. Lorenz, who did what
15:36 Why they destroyed Colossus
17:02 Flowers’s legacy and the lesson of discipline
18:20 Credits & sources

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