First Published report of a Chess Playing Computer Program

Kister, J. ; Stein, P. ; Ulam, S. ; Walden, W. ; Wells, M.

[ Computer Chess ] Experiments in Chess

New York: Association for Computing Machinery 1957. First Edition. [121]-244 pages. Entire Issue offered. Publishers' tan printed wraps. Upper corner bumped. Some creasing/tearing of the paper spine. Minor soiling and sun toning to the wrappers, and light wear to the extremities overall. In Journal of the Association for Computing Machinery April 1957 Volume 4 Number 2. Very Good. Wraps. [26046]


Originally presented at the August 27-29, 1956 ACM, "Experiments in Chess" is "The first published report of a chess-playing computer program. (Pratt 1987, 210-11). The authors, all members of the nuclear bomb program at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, programmed the laboratory's MANIAC I computer to play a simplified version of chess using a 6 x 6 board rather than the standard 8 x 8." The use of a smaller board enabled the MANIAC I to decide on a play in about 12 minutes, allowing a sort of real time activity.

The interest in computers playing chess was an early step in assessing the mechanical brain's ability to think like a human, capturing the imagination of the average person as well as those of computer science researchers. "The problem of finding methods of play which would enable the machine to produce anything even faintly comparable with the result of human planning is extremely difficult..."

Hook and Norman, Origins of Cyberspace #749.

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