Players' Performance

The World's First Chess Computer

In 1910 the Spanish inventor Leonardo Torres y Quevedo commenced work to design a chess-playing automaton, to prove his theory that machines could do many things popularly classed as thought. In 1911 he produced El Ajedrecista (Spanish for Chessplayer), which was designed for the end game of King and Rook against King. The machine was fully automatic, using electromagnets under the board, electrical sensing of the pieces on the board and a mechanical arm to move its own pieces. The machine could deliver mate with King and Rook against King regardless of the initial position of the pieces on the board. For the sake of simplicity, the algorithm used to calculate the positions didn't always deliver mate in the minimum amount of moves possible, but it did mate the opponent flawlessly every time.El Ajedrecista made its public debut during the Paris World Fair of 1914. In 1920 Torres and his son Gonzalo built a second chess automaton, similar to the first, but using magnets underneath the board, rather than a mechanical arm, to move the pieces. Both these machines are still in working order and can be found in the Torres Quevedo Museum of the Technical University of Madrid.