The first real chess program actually predates the invention of the computer and was written by no less a luminary than Alan Turing, the British genius who cracked the Nazi Enigma code. In 1952, he processed a chess algorithm on slips of paper, playing the role of CPU himself, and this “paper machine” played a competent game. This connection went beyond Turing’s personal interest in chess. Chess had a long-standing reputation as a unique nexus of the human intellect, and building a machine that could beat the world champion would mean building a truly intelligent machine.
