I thought this excerpt of a report written about Colossus in 1945 was interesting:

It is regretted that it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the fascination of a Colossus at work: its sheer bulk and apparent complexity; the fantastic speed of thin paper tape round the glittering pulleys; the childish pleasure of not-not, span, print main heading and other gadgets; the wizardry of purely mechanical decoding letter by letter (one novice thought she was being hoaxed); the uncanny action of the typewriter in printing the correct scores without and beyond human aid; the stepping of display; periods of eager expectation culminating in the sudden appearance of the longed-for score; and the strange rhythms characterizing every type of run: the stately break-in, the erratic short run, the regularity of wheel-breaking, the stolid rectangle interrupted by the wild leaps of the carriage-return, the frantic chatter of a motor run, even the ludicrous frenzy of hosts of bogus scores.

It sounds something like working with an LLM these days, right down to the "ludicrous frenzy of hosts of bogus scores".

It is worth mentioning that there is, today, a Colossus you can see and hear working  in one of the buildings that originally housed the Colossi, in the national museum of computing.

It is a thing worth seeing.