The Early History of Computer Chess

Abstract

On March 9th 1949 Claude E. Shannon, a research worker at Bell Telephone Laboratories, Murray Hill, New Jersey, presented a paper at a New York convention. His paper was called Programming a Computer for Playing Chess and its enormous significance lies not in the fact that it was the first paper to be published on the subject but that many of Shannon’s original ideas can still be seen in today’s programs. Shannon did not claim that computer chess itself was of any practical importance but he did realize that a satisfactory solution to the problem might result in progress being made in other areas of automatic problem solving. In particular, he listed the possibility of building machines (i.e. writing programs) that could design electronic circuits, handle complex telephone switching problems, translate from one language to another, make strategic decisions in simplified military operations, orchestrate a melody or handle problems of logical deduction.

‘Many have become chess masters — no one has become the master of chess.’

Tarrasch