A miniature Lego model of the legendary World War Two computer, the Colossus was built and put on display at the National Museum of Computing (TNMOC, www.tnmoc.org). Veiled in secrecy until 1975, the Colossus was reconstructed between 1994 and 2007, and the “real” copy of the original, the working Colossus Rebuild is now one of the main attractions at TNMOC.

The Lego model was viewed by many visitors attending the programmes of the Summer Bytes Festival (www.tnmoc.org/summer-bytes-extended-opening-times) held between 27 June and 1 September at TNMOC. The special Lego weekend held on 17-18 August offered programmes and workshops to acquaint visitors with Lego’s ICT applications, for instance, their Mindstorms EV3 technology that is used in robotics. Lego fan James Pegrum built the scale model Colossus (34,29×19,05×11,43 centimetres in dimension). Pegrum admits that he enjoys making models based on British history, and this is how he grew interested in the codebreaking machine, the world’s first electronic computer.