Wikinventia — Atlas of discoveries and inventions · Global Age

Los Alamos Chess — Ulam, Stein, Wells, Kister, Walden and Pasta

1956 AD · Transmission: Global
ComputingAIInventionNorth American

In 1956, a team at the Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory (Stanislaw Ulam, Paul Stein, Mark Wells, James Kister, William Walden and John Pasta) programmed the first chess-like game actually run on a physical computer, the MANIAC I. Due to its severe memory (600 words) and speed (11,000 operations/second) limitations, the team reduced the board to 6x6 squares, removed the bishops, and simplified other rules, producing the variant known as "Los Alamos chess". The program applied a pure brute-force minimax search (Shannon's Type A strategy), taking about 12 minutes per move at a 4-ply depth. It played three games: against itself, against a strong player (who won given queen odds), and against a lab assistant who had just learned the rules — whom the machine defeated, marking the first documented victory of a computer over a human in a chess-like game.

InstitutionLos Alamos Scientific Laboratory
Historical regionUnited States
Primary sourceKister, J., Stein, P., Ulam, S., Walden, W., Wells, M. — "Experiments in Chess" (Journal of the ACM, 1957)
Secondary sourcechessprogramming.org — "MANIAC I"; Wikipedia (en) — "Los Alamos chess"
Original languageEnglish
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