Tommy Flowers was a British engineer. During World War 2, Flowers along with Alan Turing

designed 'Colossus', the world's first programmable electronic computer, to help solve

encrypted German messages.

After the war, Flowers applied for a bank loan to build another machine like 'Colossus'

     ...but was denied the loan because the bank didn't believe

                       that such a machine could work!

He could not argue that he had already designed and built many of these machines because his

work was covered by the 'Official Secrets Act'.

His work in computing was not fully acknowledged until the 1970's. His family had known only

that he had done some 'secret and important' work.

Thomas "Tommy" Harold Flowers, MBE (1905 - 1998)

Photo: Unknown • Believed to be in the Public Domain

(Age - Copyright expired)