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El Ajedrecista — Leonardo Torres Quevedo

1912 AD · Transmission: Silenced
TechnologyAIInventionHispanic

In 1912 the Cantabrian engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo unveiled El Ajedrecista, an electromechanical device capable of playing the king-and-rook-versus-king chess endgame fully autonomously: it analyzed the position, made decisions, and executed moves without human intervention, always guaranteeing checkmate. It is the first artifact in history to execute a game through automated logic, a direct precursor of artificial intelligence systems. Torres Quevedo also built the first functional remote control (the Telekino, 1903) and the first electromechanical analog computer (1920). His work is practically unknown in the canonical history of computing and AI. In 1920-1922 his son Gonzalo, under his direction, built a second version: the same algorithm and decision logic as the 1912 machine, with improvements limited to presentation (pieces moved by electromagnets hidden beneath a horizontal board, instead of a visible mechanical arm, plus a phonograph announcing "check" and "checkmate"). It was this second version that Norbert Wiener encountered firsthand at the 1951 Paris Cybernetics Congress.

InstitutionRoyal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences of Spain
Historical regionSpain — Madrid
Primary sourceTorres Quevedo, L. — Ensayos sobre Automática. Su definición, extensión teórica de sus aplicaciones. Journal of the Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences (1914)
Original languageSpanish
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