The rapid advancement of computing in the 1960s and 1970s was key in increasing chess engine strength, both drastic software and hardware innovations lead to stronger engines. The rise of chess engines (1960s - 1970s)

Capable of playing an entire game, this engine would mark the real beginning of chess computing. The engine was built for the IBM 704 mainframe, and took around eight minutes per move. įinally, in 1957 an IBM engineer named Alex Bernstein created the worlds first fully automated chess engine. The algorithm ran on the Ferranti Mark 1, the first commercially available computer, and although lacking the power to play a full game would serve as a proof of concept for chess computing. In 1951 a close colleague of Turing, a man named Dietrich Prinz, would manage to create and implement a basic chess algorithm that was capable of solving mate in two. Turing would test his algorithm by hand, and although the algorithm itself was weak, Turing and Shannon had laid the foundation of greatness. One year later, Alan Turing would create the first computer chess playing algorithm, yet the hardware at the time lacked in power. In 1949, Claude Shannon would publish a paper detailing a program that could potentially play chess against a human. Two men, Alan Turing and Claude Shannon pioneered these innovations, and come the end of WW2 both would pick up an interest in programming a chess engine. World War II would lead to astonishing technological breakthroughs, the largest of these of course being the invention/creation of the computer.

The beginning of chess computing (1940s - 1950s) El Ajedrecista marked the first actual chess engine, and created lots of excitement around the field in general. The machine was capable of checkmating the black king (played by a human) every time, and able to identify illegal moves. El Ajedrecista could play an endgame with white, in which white has a king and rook, while black only has a king. Unlike the Mechanical Turk, El Ajedrecista was actually the first autonomous machine capable of playing chess. The first real instance of a chess computer would appear in 1912, with an automaton named El Ajedrecista built by Leonardo Torres y Quevedo. Years after the machines demise the hoax would be uncovered, with a human being the true source of the Mechanical Turk's intelligence the entire time. From 1770 to 1854 the Mechanical Turk would remain in operation, only to eventually go down in a fire. The Mechanical Turk could play chess and beat opponents, even going as far as solving the iconic knight's tour chess puzzle. Created by Hungarian inventor Wolfgang von Kempelen, the Mechanical Turk, a life sized human model, debuted in 1770 as the worlds first autonomous chess robot. The earliest form of a 'chess engine' appears in the 18th century with a machine named the Mechanical Turk.

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