The Bernstein Chess Program, was the first complete chess program, developed in 1957 at Service Bureau Corporation, Madison & 59th Street, Manhattan, New York City [1], by chess player and programmer at IBM, Alex Bernstein with his colleagues Michael de V. Roberts, Timothy Arbuckle and Martin Belsky, supported by chess advisor Arthur Bisguier [2], who became IBM employee at that time and in 1957 international chess grandmaster, and supervised by Nathaniel Rochester [3]. The Bernstein Chess Program was the prototype of a selective forward pruning, Shannon Type B program. On an IBM 704, one of the last vacuum tube computers, it searched four plies minimax in around 8 minutes, considering seven most plausible moves from each position and evaluated material, mobility, area control and king defense [4].
Alex Bernstein, IBM 704 console [5]

Publications

• Alex Bernstein, Michael de V. Roberts (1958). Computer vs. Chess-Player. Scientific American, Vol. 198, pp. 96-105. pdf from The Computer History Museum, reprinted 1988 in Computer Chess Compendium
• Alex Bernstein (1958). A Chess Playing Program for the IBM 704. Chess Review July 1958, pdf from The Computer History Museum
• Alex Bernstein, Michael de V. Roberts, Timothy Arbuckle, Martin Belsky (1958). A chess playing program for the IBM 704. Proceedings of the 1958 Western Joint Computer Conference, pp. 157-159, Los Angeles, California. pdf from The Computer History Museum
• Fritz Leiber (1962). The 64-Square Madhouse. Worlds of If ^[6]

External Links

• The Bernstein Chess Program from The Computer History Museum
• Classic Computer Chess - ... The programs of yesteryear by Carey, hosted by the Internet Archive ^[7]
• Photos by Andreas Feininger, Getty Images
• Chess Pieces - IBM Research the Deep Blue site
• Runner-Up - The New Yorker - November 29, 1958
• Alex Bernstein: juega al ajedrez con un IBM 704 (Thinking Machines), YouTube Video
  

References

1. ^ Runner-Up - The New Yorker - November 29, 1958
2. ^ Arthur Bisguier from Wikipedia.de (German)
3. ^ Nathaniel Rochester (computer scientist) from Wikipedia
4. ^ Alex Bernstein, Michael de V. Roberts (1958). Computer vs. Chess-Player. Scientific American, Vol. 198, pp. 96-105. pdf from The Computer History Museum, reprinted in Computer Chess Compendium by David Levy
5. ^ IBM programmer Alex Bernstein 1958 Courtesy of IBM Archives from The Computer History Museum
6. ^ Fritz Leiber's "The 64-Square Madhouse" by Ian Osgood, CCC, October 28, 2013
7. ^ Re: Old programs CHAOS and USC by Dann Corbit, CCC, July 11, 2015

What links here?