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Tunny messages entirely by hand. It was during this first phase that the messages giving away
the German plans for an assault at Kursk were broken. During the second phase, lasting from
mid-1943 to February 1944, we received a limited amount of help from the Newmanry’s Heath
Robinson machine. The Heath Robinson was quite useful, but a bit slow and unreliable, and it
kept on breaking down. So it was a relief when Colossus I appeared in the Newmanry in the
middle of February 1944, initiating the third and final phase of the work.
The Newmanry people operated the Colossi and Robinson machines and did a good job. They
were totally different from the Testery crowd, largely mathematicians and engineers, whereas
the Testery people were hand-breakers and linguists. It was rather like two Native American
tribes who live in peace with each other, but do not understand each other’s language!
Three heroes
Some years ago now I referred to Alan Turing, Bill Tutte, and Tommy Flowers as the ‘three
heroes’ of Bletchley Park, and I am pleased to see that other people are using that terminology,
because heroes they were: Turing, about whom we know plenty by now, Tutte, whose name is
recognized by few, and Flowers, also largely unknown, who designed and built Colossus. In
my view, this puts any one of our heroes in the class of the Duke of Wellington or the Duke
of Marlborough. The effect of what they did was enormous—in fact, even greater than what
figure 16.2 Jerry Roberts being presented to the Queen at Bletchley Park in 2011. A Tunny machine is behind.
Copyright Shaun Armstrong/mubsta.com. Reproduced with permission of Bletchley Park Trust.