The First Public Discussion of the Secret Colossus Project

Abstract

This is a tale about how the Colossus was first revealed to the computing community. It centers on the first conference to be devoted to computing history, held in Los Alamos, New Mexico, in June 1976. The most important player was Brian Randell, a professor of computer science who was one of the first who might be considered a computer historian. It begins in 1976 and finishes in 2016 when Randell and I discovered a recording of that event.