Britain built the world's first programmable electronic computer. 🇬🇧 Not in a university. In a Post Office. Watch the full story. 🎥 Tommy Flowers was a bricklayer's son from the East End. There was no money for university. So he went to evening classes, year after year. 📚 In the war, Hitler sent his most secret orders by teleprinter. Scrambled by a machine even more complex than Enigma. Breaking one message by hand took weeks. ⏳ Tommy had a better idea. A machine built from fifteen hundred glass valves. The experts said they'd never last. One senior codebreaker wanted him taken off the work for "squandering good valves". 🙄 Bletchley wouldn't back him. So he put in some of his own money. 💷 Eleven months later, Colossus read the enemy's messages at five thousand letters a second. Weeks became hours. ⚡ On 1 June 1944, five days before D-Day, a bigger Colossus went to work. It showed Hitler had swallowed the bait. He still expected the landings at Calais. 🎯 After the war, the machines were broken up. Every drawing was burnt. 🔥 The government gave Tommy a thousand pounds. It didn't cover what he'd spent himself. He still shared it with his team. The Bank of England turned down his loan for another one. They didn't believe it could work... He couldn't tell them he'd already built ten. 🤐 Everyone's heard of Silicon Valley. Hardly anyone has heard of Dollis Hill. 📍 Today a rebuilt Colossus runs again at Bletchley Park. You can stand beside it and hear it. 🏛️ Now we're told this country can't build anything any more. Tommy proved them wrong once. Help us switch Britain back on: proudofus.co.uk/support 💡 Be part of us. ☝️🇬🇧 Be Proud Of Us. 🙏🇬🇧