Web page honouring Tony Sale set up by computing museum

A special webpage has been set up to let people pay tribute to Tony Sale, the leader of the team that rebuilt Colossus Mk II, who died last Sunday aged 80.

Mr Sale was not only the driving force behind the rebuild of Colossus, but also a co-founder of the successful campaign to save Bletchley Park and a founding trustee of the National Museum of Computing (TNMOC).

Mr Sale, who was born in 1931, had a successful career in electronics and computing. He started the campaign in 1991, along with his wife Margaret and a few colleagues. But he wanted to also pay homage to the engineers and code breakers of WWII.

Working with small fragments of information he gathered together in 1993 because the original drawings of the mechanical assemblies of Colossus had been deliberately burnt in 1960, the team began to rebuild Colossus Mk II.

After nearly 15 years and the odd mishap, they successfully completed this hugely complex task and recreated the second version of the world's first digital, programmable and electronic machine.

Thanks to him and the efforts of his team, people can now watch a working replica of the forerunner of the modern computer in H Block at Bletchley Park.

Andy Clark, chairman of TNMOC trustees paid tribute to his achievements at the museum: "Tony's contributions to TNMOC have been immense and I am quite sure that, without his remarkable talents, enthusiasm and drive, the museum would not have come into existence.

"The rebuilding of a functioning Colossus Mk II, Tony's homage to the wartime codebreakers of the Lorenz cipher at Bletchley Park, is such a remarkable piece of work that it will forever be the model of excellence to which the museum aspires."

TNMOC has decided to let other people honour Mr Sale and retell their memories of this remarkable man. A web page, "Remembering Tony Sale", has been set up where people can add comments and read other tributes to him.

One such comment, from Christian Payne, reads: "One machine can do the work of 50 ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one Tony Sale."