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Programming a Computer for Playing Chess — Claude Shannon

1950 AD · Transmission: Global
ComputingAIMethodNorth American

In March 1950, Claude Shannon published in Philosophical Magazine "Programming a Computer for Playing Chess", the first technical article to mathematically structure how to program a complete game of chess on a general-purpose computer. Shannon distinguishes two strategies: Type A (brute force, exhaustively exploring the move tree to a fixed depth) and Type B (intelligent selection, exploring only the most promising lines). The article explicitly cites the Torres Quevedo precedent: "A more honest attempt to design a chess-playing machine was made in 1914 by Torres y Quevedo, who constructed a device which played an end game of king and rook against king", with a bibliographic reference to Vigneron's 1914 article describing the mechanism. Shannon's paper is purely theoretical — he did not program or run an actual game — but it became the reference framework for all subsequent computer chess.

InstitutionBell Telephone Laboratories
Historical regionUnited States
Primary sourceShannon, C.E. — "Programming a Computer for Playing Chess", The London, Edinburgh, and Dublin Philosophical Magazine and Journal of Science, Ser. 7, Vol. 41, No. 314, pp. 256-275 (March 1950)
Secondary sourcechessprogramming.org — "Claude Shannon"; History of Information — "Shannon Issues the First Technical Paper on Computer Chess"
Original languageEnglish
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