sje wrote:The machine goes by the name of Endgame and has been part of the MIT Museum collection since it was donated by Shannon's family after his passing in 2001. I am tempted to pay a visit if it's on display and has some associated documentation, although travel is a challenge for me nowadays.
I'm surprised that the machine hasn't had much attention in the literature, as it is the very first dedicated, personal chess computer and came a quarter century before the first Fidelity Chess Challenger. It might still be around a quarter century after the last commercial chess computer is gone.
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150 relay operations taking 10 to 15 seconds sounds to me much more than is needed to play KRvK; the machine appears much more complex than the Torres machine which does the job fast and easy.
On the other hand, 10 to 15 seconds of relay steps at circa 10 Hz seems to be far less than what's needed to handle a six man position without huge parallelism.
That's all it did according to Shannon, via direct communication. 3 pieces...
As far as the time taken, that sounds pretty reasonable. Had to be a FSM type gadget, figure 1/2 second or so for a relay to trip... Would be an interesting UG course assignment to design a FSM that would handle KR vs K, in fact...
The unlimited intellect assumed in the theory of games, on the other hand, never make a
mistake and a smallest winning advantage is as good as mate in one. A game between two
such mental giants, Mr. A and Mr. B, would proceed as follows. They sit down at the
chessboard, draw the colours, and then survey the pieces for a moment. Then either: -
(1)Mr. A says, "I resign" or
(2)Mr. B says, "I resign" or
(3)Mr. A says, "I offer a draw," and Mr. B replies, "I accept."
Henk wrote:I guess it might not be too difficult to sell an original letter from Fisher.
Not really looking to sell anything at all. Will probably donate what seems historically relevant. I have quite a collection, most (if not all) of the ACM and old WCCC tournament booklets, things like the Shannon stuff, etc...
I suppose I should buy a copy of the SciAm article. But it's only four pages long of which two are likely there just to get the layman reader up to speed. It might not even reference the Endgame machine.
Or I could wait until the Perft(14) project completes and write a short paper on the process, results, and uses. I might be able to get SciAm to publish it and they could give me a copy of Shannon's article for free.
