Celebrating 80 years of the Colossus computer – Squirrel Project Working with expert watchmakers Elliot Brown, we have created a watch design to celebrate the 80th anniversary of Tommy Flowers inventing the Colossus computer at Dollis Hill. Colossus gave the allied forces a significant advantage in their efforts to end the Second World War. The styling and features of the watch draw on this rich heritage. On the front, the copper highlights used throughout represent the orange-copper glow of the thermionic valves (electronic vacuum tubes) that enabled Flowers’s machine to outperform other devices that were competing to crack the German codes. The numbers one and four shadow the nine and three on the watch face to display 1943, the year Colossus was successfully made to work. At the six position on the face is the shadowed footprint of Dollis Hill, the location of the team and the Colossus Mk1. Below this is 11951, which is the case number for multiple entries in the Dollis Hill war diary, detailing the development of Colossus and the movement of these machines to Bletchley Park. The batons at position five are also highlighted in copper and signify the scope of the community that benefitted from Flowers’s work. On the back, we celebrate these “squirrels” with a bespoke icon, surrounded by the names of their departments, appropriately encrypted using the Lorenz (Tunney) cypher. Along the bottom is space for 25 characters so the owner can personalise the watch, for example to have their name engraved.
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