If you saw Jeremy Clarkson's documentary on the computer tonight, then please ignore his tirade on how the secrecy of Colossus let the Americans overtake us in the computer industry. His researchers failed to uncover the Manchester Baby, the first von Neuman architecture machine, and the very successful commercial computers that Ferranti sold based on that design. Or how Manchester invented virtual memory with the ATLAS computer, which was the fastest in the world during the early 1960s. Or how Britain still had an active independent computer industry into the 1990s. It's fun to blame the government for its destruction and the eventual American take-over, but it's just not true.

(I was also incensed at his side-lining of Turing, but that's another story. Yes, the engineer should have got more recognition. But Colossus would not have been made without Turing, and his work defined the limits of computability. Everything we have today stems from his theoretical work. That's why he's celebrated today; not just for his WWII effort, but for everything else he gave us, before our government chemically castrated him for the offence of liking men)