Pioneers

Tommy Flowers

Engineer

Citation Formats

General Reference

Computing Atlas. "Tommy Flowers." Accessed August 30, 2026. https://dev-computing.interactiveatlas.org/pioneers/tommy-flowers.

APA Style

Computing Atlas. (n.d.). Tommy Flowers. Retrieved August 30, 2026, from https://dev-computing.interactiveatlas.org/pioneers/tommy-flowers

BibTeX

@misc{computingatlas-tommy-flowers,
  author = {Computing Atlas},
  title = {Tommy Flowers},
  year = {2026},
  url = {https://dev-computing.interactiveatlas.org/pioneers/tommy-flowers},
  note = {Accessed August 30, 2026}
}

British engineer at the Post Office Research Station who designed and built Colossus during the Second World War, the world's first large scale programmable electronic computer, to help break high level German cipher traffic at Bletchley Park.

Facts

Birth Year

1905 1

Birth Date

1905-12-22 1

Death Year

1998 1

Death Date

1998-10-28 1

Nationality

British 1

Cross-Tradition Connections

Invented

Colossus

Source Wikipedia: Tommy Flowers

Sources

1. Wikipedia: Tommy Flowers

Wikimedia FoundationIntroduction

Quote, Introduction

During World War II, Flowers designed and built Colossus, the world's first programmable electronic computer, to help decipher encrypted German messages.

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