El Ajedrecista
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''El Ajedrecista'' (, ) is an
automaton An automaton (; : automata or automatons) is a relatively self-operating machine, or control mechanism designed to automatically follow a sequence of operations, or respond to predetermined instructions. Some automata, such as bellstrikers i ...
built in 1912 by
Leonardo Torres Quevedo Leonardo Torres Quevedo (; 28 December 1852 – 18 December 1936) was a Spanish civil engineer, mathematician and inventor, known for his numerous engineering innovations, including Aerial tramway, aerial trams, airships, catamarans, and remote ...
in
Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...
, a pioneering autonomous machine capable of playing chess. As opposed to the human-operated
Mechanical Turk The Mechanical Turk, also known as the Automaton Chess Player (, ; ), or simply The Turk, was a fraudulent chess-playing Chess engine, machine constructed in 1770, which appeared to be able to play a strong game of chess against a human oppone ...
and Ajeeb, ''El Ajedrecista'' had a true integrated automation built to play chess without human guidance. It played an endgame with three
chess piece A chess piece, or chessman, is a game piece that is placed on a chessboard to play the game of chess. It can be either White and Black in chess, white or black, and it can be one of six types: King (chess), king, Queen (chess), queen, Rook (ches ...
s, automatically moving a white
king King is a royal title given to a male monarch. A king is an Absolute monarchy, absolute monarch if he holds unrestricted Government, governmental power or exercises full sovereignty over a nation. Conversely, he is a Constitutional monarchy, ...
and a rook to
checkmate Checkmate (often shortened to mate) is any game position in chess and other chess-like games in which a player's king is in check (threatened with ) and there is no possible escape. Checkmating the opponent wins the game. In chess, the king is ...
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 ''Scientific American'', informally abbreviated ''SciAm'' or sometimes ''SA'', is an American popular science magazine. Many scientists, including Albert Einstein and Nikola Tesla, have contributed articles to it, with more than 150 Nobel Pri ...
'' as "Torres and His Remarkable Automatic Devices" on November 6, 1915. In 1951, ''El Ajedrecista'' defeated
Savielly Tartakower Savielly Tartakower (also known as ''Xavier'' or ''Ksawery'' ''Tartakower'', less often ''Tartacover'' or ''Tartakover''; 21 February 1887 – 4 February 1956) was a Polish chess player. He was awarded the title of Grandmaster (chess), Internatio ...
at the Paris Cybernetic Conference, being the first Grandmaster to lose against a machine. 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 In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm () is a finite sequence of Rigour#Mathematics, mathematically rigorous instructions, typically used to solve a class of specific Computational problem, problems or to perform a computation. Algo ...
that calculates the moves. It did, however, checkmate the opponent every time. If an illegal move was made by the opposite player, the automaton would signal it by turning on a light. If the opposing player made three illegal moves, the automaton would stop playing.


Technical description

Its internal construction was published by H. Vigneron.H. Vigneron: Robots. English Translation in: David Levy, Monty Newborn: ''Chess and Computers'', pp. 13-23. Computer Science Press, 1982. The pieces had a metallic mesh at their base, which closed an electric circuit that encoded their position in the board. When the black king was moved by hand, an algorithm calculated and performed the next best move for the white player. Torres defined two zones for use in his algorithm, the first consisting of the a-, b-, and c- files, and the second consisting of the f-, g-, and h-files. The algorithm is as follows: If the black King * is in the same zone as the rook ** then the rook moves away from the zone to either the a- or the h-file. * is not in the same zone as the rook and the vertical distance between the black king and the rook is ** more than a square *** then the rook moves one square vertically towards the black king. ** one square, with the vertical distance between the two kings being *** more than two squares **** then the king moves one square vertically towards the black king. *** two squares, with the number of squares representing their horizontal distance apart being **** odd ***** then if the rook is on the a- or h-file, it moves to the b- or g-file respectively, and vice versa. **** even ***** then the white king moves one square horizontally towards the black king. **** zero ***** then the rook moves one square vertically towards the black king. Here is an example game where White, following Torres' algorithm, checkmates the black King, who performs the best defense according to a chess
endgame tablebase In chess, the endgame tablebase, or simply the tablebase, is a computerised database containing precalculated evaluations of chess endgame, endgame positions. Tablebases are used to analyse finished games, as well as by chess engines to evaluate ...
, recorded in
Portable Game Notation Portable Game Notation (PGN) is a standard plain text format for recording chess games (both the moves and related data), which can be read by humans and is also supported by most chess software. History PGN was devised around 1993, by Steven J ...
:
 EN "8/8/1k6/8/R7/8/5K2/8 w - - 0 1"
1. Rh4 Kc5 2. Kf3 Kd5 3. Ke3 Kd6 4. Rh5 Kc6 5. Ke4 Kd6 6. Rg5 Kc6 7. Kd4 Kd6 8. Rg6+ Kd7 9. Kd5 Ke7 10. Rh6 Kf7 11. Ra6 Ke7 12. Rb6 Kf7 13. Ke5 Ke7 14. Rb7+ Kd8 15. Ke6 Kc8 16. Rh7 Kb8 17. Rg7 Ka8 18. Kd6 Kb8 19. Kc6 Ka8 20. Kb6 Kb8 21. Rg8#
In the first version, the pieces were plugged into the board, and the game states of check and checkmate were signaled with light bulbs. Leonardo's son Gonzalo made an improved chess automaton based on El Ajedrecista in 1920, which made its moves via
electromagnet An electromagnet is a type of magnet in which the magnetic field is produced by an electric current. Electromagnets usually consist of wire (likely copper) wound into a electromagnetic coil, coil. A current through the wire creates a magnetic ...
s located under the board. It also included a sound effect, with a voice recording announcing
checkmate Checkmate (often shortened to mate) is any game position in chess and other chess-like games in which a player's king is in check (threatened with ) and there is no possible escape. Checkmating the opponent wins the game. In chess, the king is ...
when the computer won the game. Both are still working and are on display at the ''Museo Torres Quevedo'' in the ''Escuela de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos'' in
Madrid Madrid ( ; ) is the capital and List of largest cities in Spain, most populous municipality of Spain. It has almost 3.5 million inhabitants and a Madrid metropolitan area, metropolitan area population of approximately 7 million. It i ...
.


Gallery

File:Ajedrecista primero1.JPG, "El Ajedrecista" #1 complete view. File:Ajedrecista primero2.JPG, "El Ajedrecista" #1 close up. File:El Ajedrecista de Leonardo Torres Quevedo 02.jpg, "El Ajedrecista" #2 front view. File:Ajedrecista segundo1.JPG, "El Ajedrecista" #2 interior view. File:Ajedrecista segundo2.JPG, "El Ajedrecista" #2 interior view, close up.


Notes


External links


Leonardo Torres's chess-machine

Chessbase News: AutomatonsCybernetics, Computer Design, and a Meeting of the Minds An influential 1951 conference in Paris considered the computer as a model of—and for—the human mindThis 1920 Chess Automaton Was Wired to Win. Inventor Leonardo Torres Quevedo aspired to build machines that thinkThe Oldest AI
*{{usurped,

} * King and Rook vs. King on Wikibooks History of chess Chess automatons 1912 in chess Spanish inventions 1910s robots