W. W. Chandler

Born December 1, 1913, Bridport, Dorset, England; died September 11, 1989, London, England; a member of the General Post Office team that developed, installed, and maintained the Colossus machines for the Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park during World War II.

Education: BSc, London University, 1938.

W.W. Chandler began his career as an apprentice telephone engineer with Siemens Bros. in 1930. He joined the British Post Office Research department in 1936 and obtained a BSc degree from London University in 1938 by private study. Prior to World War II he worked on long-distance signaling and dialing systems of the Post Office telephone network. During the war he was responsible for the installation and maintenance of the Colossus machines at Bletchley Park. After the war he helped develop and install the MOSAIC computer for the Radar Establishment at Malvern and later worked on optical character recognition for the Post Office.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Biographical

Randell, Brian, 'The Colossus," in Metropolis, N., J. Howlett, and Gian-Carlo Rota, eds., A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century, Academic Press, New York, 1980, pp. 47-92.

Significant Publications

Chandler, W.W., 'The Installation and Maintenance of Colossus," Ann. Hist. Comp., Vol. 5, No. 3, 1983.