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Mephisto (automaton)
Mephisto was the name given to a chess-playing "pseudo-automaton" built in 1876. Unlike The Turk and Ajeeb it had no hidden operator, instead being remotely controlled by electromechanical means. Constructed by Charles Godfrey Gumpel (c.1835 - 1921), an Alsatian manufacturer of artificial limbs, it took some 6 or 7 years to build and was first shown in 1878 at Gumpel's home in Leicester Square, London. Mephisto was mainly operated by chess master Isidor Gunsberg. Description ''Mephisto'' consisted of a life-size figure of an elegant devil, with one foot rendered as a cloven hoof, dressed in red velvet and seated in an armchair in front of an unenclosed, open-sided table. This table set-up was provided to reassure the player that there were no compartments beneath the board where a man could be hidden (as in "The Turk"). In addition, the public was invited to inspect the contraption before each exhibition, with the intention of demonstrating that there was no player inside. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chess
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to distinguish it from related games, such as xiangqi (Chinese chess) and shogi (Japanese chess). The recorded history of chess goes back at least to the emergence of a similar game, chaturanga, in seventh-century India. The rules of chess as we know them today emerged in Europe at the end of the 15th century, with standardization and universal acceptance by the end of the 19th century. Today, chess is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide. Chess is an abstract strategy game that involves no hidden information and no use of dice or cards. It is played on a chessboard with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. At the start, each player controls sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mephisto (chess Computer)
Mephisto was a line of chess computers sold by Hegener & Glaser (H+G). In addition to integrated travel and sensory computers, they also sold a line of modular electronic autosensory boards (Modular, Exclusive, München, and Bavaria) which could accept different program, processor, and display modules. Its strongest software was written by Richard Lang, who later ported it to personal computers as ''Psion'' and ChessGenius. Lang's Mephisto programs won six World Computer Chess Championships (WCCC) from 1984 to 1990. H&G also sold engines licensed from Johan de Koning, Ed Schröder, and Frans Morsch. Different models used different 8-bit, 16-bit and 32-bit processors, including MOS Technology 6502, Motorola 68HC05, Motorola 68000 and others. Hegener & Glaser and its Mephisto brand were bought in 1994 by Saitek. Their computers currently sold under the Mephisto brand use programs written by Frans Morsch. Hegener & Glaser (Mephisto) * 1969 established in Munich b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hoaxes In Science
A hoax is a widely publicized falsehood so fashioned as to invite reflexive, unthinking acceptance by the greatest number of people of the most varied social identities and of the highest possible social pretensions to gull its victims into putting up the highest possible social currency in support of the hoax. Whereas the promoters of frauds, fakes, and scams devise them so that they will withstand the highest degree of scrutiny customary in the affair, hoaxers are confident, justifiably or not, that their representations will receive no scrutiny at all. They have such confidence because their representations belong to a world of notions fundamental to the victims' views of reality, but whose truth and importance they accept without argument or evidence, and so never question. Some hoaxers intend eventually to unmask their representations as in fact a hoax so as to expose their victims as fools; seeking some form of profit, other hoaxers hope to maintain the hoax indefini ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1876 In Chess
Events January–March * January 1 ** The Reichsbank opens in Berlin. ** The Bass Brewery Red Triangle becomes the world's first registered trademark symbol. * February 2 – The National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs is formed at a meeting in Chicago; it replaces the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players. Morgan Bulkeley of the Hartford Dark Blues is selected as the league's first president. * February 2 – Third Carlist War – Battle of Montejurra: The new commander General Fernando Primo de Rivera marches on the remaining Carlist stronghold at Estella, where he meets a force of about 1,600 men under General Carlos Calderón, at nearby Montejurra. After a courageous and costly defence, Calderón is forced to withdraw. * February 14 – Alexander Graham Bell applies for a patent for the telephone, as does Elisha Gray. * February 19 – Third Carlist War: Government troops under General Primo de Rivera drive through the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chess Automatons
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to distinguish it from related games, such as xiangqi (Chinese chess) and shogi (Japanese chess). The recorded history of chess goes back at least to the emergence of a similar game, chaturanga, in seventh-century India. The rules of chess as we know them today emerged in Europe at the end of the 15th century, with standardization and universal acceptance by the end of the 19th century. Today, chess is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide. Chess is an abstract strategy game that involves no hidden information and no use of dice or cards. It is played on a chessboard with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. At the start, each player controls sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
El Ajedrecista
''El Ajedrecista'' ( en, The Chess Player) is an automaton built in 1912 by Leonardo Torres y Quevedo in Madrid, one of the first autonomous machines capable of playing chess. As opposed to the human-operated The Turk and Ajeeb, ''El Ajedrecista'' was a true automaton built to play chess without human guidance. It played an endgame with three chess pieces, automatically moving a white king and a rook to checkmate the black king moved by a human opponent. The device could be considered the first computer game in history. It created great excitement when it made its debut, at the University of Paris in 1914. It was first widely mentioned in ''Scientific American'' as "Torres and His Remarkable Automatic Devices" on November 6, 1915. The automaton does not deliver checkmate in the minimum number of moves, nor always within the 50 moves allotted by the fifty-move rule, because of the simple algorithm that calculates the moves. It did, however, checkmate the opponent every time. If ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saitek
Saitek is a designer and manufacturer of consumer electronics founded in 1979 by Swiss technologist Eric Winkler. They are best known for their PC gaming controllers, mice, keyboards, and their numerous analogue flight controllers such as joysticks, throttles, and rudder pedals. Most Saitek products have been rebranded as Logitech G products since their acquisition by the company. History Saitek (originally called SciSys until 1987) was founded in 1979 by Swiss technologist Eric Winkler as a manufacturer of electronic chess games. By the 1990s the company had distribution and design offices in the United States, Germany, France and the United Kingdom, as well as a factory in China. In 1994, Saitek acquired Hegner & Glaser's successful Mephisto line of chess computers. Saitek diversified into PC peripherals, focusing on game controllers for flight simulation, driving and first-person gaming. Saitek has also expanded into PC peripherals, with an emphasis on input, connectiv ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World Microcomputer Chess Championship
World Computer Chess Championship (WCCC) is an event held periodically since 1974 where computer chess engines compete against each other. The event is organized by the International Computer Games Association. It is often held in conjunction with the World Computer Speed Chess Championship and the Computer Olympiad, a collection of computer tournaments for other board games. Instead of using engine protocols, the games are played on physical boards by human operators. The WCCC is open to all types of computers including microprocessors, supercomputers, clusters, and dedicated chess hardware. Championship results In 2007, the reigning champion Junior declined to defend its title. For the 2009 edition, the rules were changed to limit platforms to commodity hardware supporting at most eight cores, thereby excluding supercomputers and large clusters. However, this was reversed in the following year and a parallel Software Championship was held instead; unlimited hardware is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chess Computer
Computer chess includes both hardware (dedicated computers) and software capable of playing chess. Computer chess provides opportunities for players to practice even in the absence of human opponents, and also provides opportunities for analysis, entertainment and training. Computer chess applications that play at the level of a chess master or higher are available on hardware from supercomputers to smart phones. Standalone chess-playing machines are also available. Stockfish, GNU Chess, Fruit, and other free open source applications are available for various platforms. Computer chess applications, whether implemented in hardware or software, utilize different strategies than humans to choose their moves: they use heuristic methods to build, search and evaluate trees representing sequences of moves from the current position and attempt to execute the best such sequence during play. Such trees are typically quite large, thousands to millions of nodes. The computational speed o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jean Taubenhaus
Jean (Jan) Taubenhaus (14 December 1850, in Warsaw – 14 September 1919, in Paris) was a Polish–born French chess master. Biography Taubenhaus was a foremost Warsaw chess player in late 1870s. In 1880, he settled in Paris. In the 4th international Congress of the German Chess Association (DSB) at Hamburg in July 1885, he took 14th place. His best achievement was the London tournament of 1886, where he tied for 3rd-4th places together with Isidor Gunsberg, after Joseph Henry Blackburne and Amos Burn, in strong London competition. He had significant victories over Blackburne, unchallenged leader of English chess, and Gunsberg, Steinitz's opponent in later match for the world championship. In 1886, he took 6th at Nottingham. In 1887, he took 19th at Frankfurt (5th DSB Congress). In 1888, he took 8th at Bradford. In 1889, he tied for 12th–13th at New York (6th US Congress). In 1890, he took 10th at Manchester (6th BCA Congress). Living in Paris, Taubenhaus gave lessons at ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mechanical Turk
The Turk, also known as the Mechanical Turk or Automaton Chess Player (german: Schachtürke, ; hu, A Török), was a fraudulent chess-playing machine constructed in the late 18th century. From 1770 until its destruction by fire in 1854 it was exhibited by various owners as an automaton, though it was eventually revealed to be an elaborate hoax.See Schaffer, Simon (1999), "Enlightened Automata", in Clark et al. (Eds), ''The Sciences in Enlightened Europe'', Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, pp. 126–165. Constructed and unveiled in 1770 by Wolfgang von Kempelen (1734–1804) to impress Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, the mechanism appeared to be able to play a strong game of chess against a human opponent, as well as perform the knight's tour, a puzzle that requires the player to move a knight to occupy every square of a chessboard exactly once. The Turk was in fact a mechanical illusion that allowed a human chess master hiding inside to operate the mach ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Exposition Universelle (1889)
The Exposition Universelle of 1889 () was a world's fair held in Paris, France, from 5 May to 31 October 1889. It was the fourth of eight expositions held in the city between 1855 and 1937. It attracted more than thirty-two million visitors. The most famous structure created for the Exposition, and still remaining, is the Eiffel Tower. Organization The Exposition was held to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Storming of the Bastille, which marked the beginning of French Revolution, and was also seen as a way to stimulate the economy and pull France out of an economic recession. The Exposition attracted 61,722 official exhibitors, of whom twenty-five thousand were from outside of France. Admission price Admission to the Exposition cost forty centimes, at a time when the price of an "economy" plate of meat and vegetables in a Paris cafe was ten centimes. Visitors paid an additional price for several of the Exposition's most popular attractions. Climbing the Eiffel To ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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