Comment Colossus came quite a long time before ENIAC (Score 1) 105
The reason why no-one knew about Colossus being the first "modern" electrical computer until recently is due to the fact that it was still classified by the British Ministry of Defence. Details of the machine were only released a couple of years ago. It had been developed as a faster method to crack the German Enigma and Shark codes during WWII than the mechanical codebreakers they had used previously. Some interesting books on the subject include "Station X: The codebreakers of Bletchley Park" by Michael Smith, and a fictionalised murder mystery set in and around Bletchley Park: "Enigma" by Robert Harris. The actual codebreaking details described in the Harris book are accurate. The "Station X" book is a companion to a series they showed on Channel 4 in the UK earlier this year.