Post-war Work and Retirement
After the war Flowers was granted £1,000 by the government, payment which did not cover Flowers' personal investment in the equipment and most of which he shared amongst the staff who helped him build and test Colossus. Ironically, Flowers applied for a loan from the Bank of England to build another machine like Colossus but was denied the loan because the bank did not believe that such a machine could work. He could not argue that he had already designed and built many of these machines because his work on Colossus was covered by the Official Secrets Act. His work in computing was not fully acknowledged until the 1970s. His family had known only that he had done some 'secret and important' work. He remained at the Post Office Research Station where he was Head of the Switching Division. He and his group pioneered work on all-electronic telephone exchanges, completing a basic design by about 1950, which led on to the Highgate Wood Telephone Exchange. He was also involved in the development of ERNIE. In 1964, he became Head of the Advanced Development Group at Standard Telephones and Cables Ltd., where he continued the development of fully electronic telephone switching equipments including a pulse amplitude modulation exchange, retiring in 1969.
In 1976, he published Introduction to Exchange Systems, a book on the engineering principles of telephone exchanges.
In 1993, he received a certificate from Hendon College, having completed a basic course in information processing on a PC.
Flowers died in 1998 aged 92, leaving a wife and two sons. He is commemorated at the old Post Office Research Station site, which became a housing development, with the main building converted into a block of flats with an access road called Flowers Close. He was honoured by London Borough of Tower Hamlets, where he was born. An Information and Communications Technology (ICT) centre for young people, named the Tommy Flowers Centre, opened there in November 2010. The Centre has since closed but the building is now occupied by part of the Tower Hamlets Pupil Referral Unit, who proudly continue to use the name "Tommy Flowers Centre" in memory of Tommy Flowers.
At Grange Farm, Kesgrave near the current BT Laboratories (Adastral Park) is Tommy Flowers Drive.
In September 2012, it was announced that his wartime diary would be placed on display at Bletchley Park.
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