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Charles F. Wilkes,
an American chess programmer and IBM-employee, together with his son Charlie Wilkes author of the chess program The Fox. Inspired by the George R. R. Martin essay The Computer Was A Fish in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, August 1972 ^[1], concerning the early ACM Tournaments, they soon started to write an own chess program in APL, without knowledge of how others had to that point programmed. They invented their own equivalent to alpha-beta pruning.

The Fox played the 4th ACM 1973 on an IBM 370-145 with a win against Tech 2 in the first round, but suffered from too many users on their timesharing system on Monday, where they lost both games due to time forfeit ^[2].

References

1. ^ George R. R. Martin (1972). The Computer Was A Fish. Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, August 1972
2. ^ Computer Chess Newsletter, Issue 2 1977 by Douglas Penrod, Charles F. Wilkes pp. 6-9, Courtesy of Peter Jennings, pdf reprint from The Computer History Museum

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