El Ajedrecista
Encyclopedia
Automaton
An automaton is a self-operating machine. The word is sometimes used to describe a robot, more specifically an autonomous robot. An alternative spelling, now obsolete, is automation.-Etymology:...
built in 1912 by Leonardo Torres y Quevedo
Leonardo Torres y Quevedo
Leonardo Torres y Quevedo was a Spanish civil engineer and mathematician of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.- Biography :Torres was born on 28 December 1852, on the Feast of the Holy Innocents, in Santa Cruz de Iguña, Molledo , Spain...
. El Ajedrecista made a public debut during the Paris World Fair of 1914, creating great excitement at the time. It was first widely mentioned in Scientific American
Scientific American
Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...
as "Torres and His Remarkable Automatic Devices" on November 6, 1915. Using electromagnet
Electromagnet
An electromagnet is a type of magnet in which the magnetic field is produced by the flow of electric current. The magnetic field disappears when the current is turned off...
s under the board
Chessboard
A chessboard is the type of checkerboard used in the board game chess, and consists of 64 squares arranged in two alternating colors...
, it automatically played an endgame with three chess piece
Chess piece
Chess pieces or chessmen are the pieces deployed on a chessboard to play the game of chess. The pieces vary in abilities, giving them different values in the game...
s, moving a king
King (chess)
In chess, the king is the most important piece. The object of the game is to trap the opponent's king so that its escape is not possible . If a player's king is threatened with capture, it is said to be in check, and the player must remove the threat of capture on the next move. If this cannot be...
and a rook
Rook (chess)
A rook is a piece in the strategy board game of chess. Formerly the piece was called the castle, tower, marquess, rector, and comes...
against a human opponent king. The device is considered the first computer game in history.
The automaton does not deliver checkmate
Checkmate
Checkmate is a situation in chess in which one player's king is threatened with capture and there is no way to meet that threat. Or, simply put, the king is under direct attack and cannot avoid being captured...
in the minimum amount of moves, nor always within 50 moves, because of the simple algorithm
Algorithm
In mathematics and computer science, an algorithm is an effective method expressed as a finite list of well-defined instructions for calculating a function. Algorithms are used for calculation, data processing, and automated reasoning...
that calculates the positions. (See fifty move rule
Fifty move rule
The fifty-move rule in chess states that a player can claim a draw if no capture has been made and no pawn has been moved in the last fifty consecutive moves . The intended reason for the rule is so that a player with no chance to win cannot be obstinate and play on indefinitely , or seek a win...
.) It did however checkmate the opponent flawlessly every time. If an illegal move was made by the opposite player, the automaton would signal it.
Its internal construction was published by H. Vigneron. Leonardo's son Gonzalo made an improved chess automaton based on El Ajedrecista in 1920, which made its moves via magnets located under the board. Both are still working and are on display at the Colegio de Ingenieros de Caminos, Canales y Puertos in Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
. As opposed to the human-operated The Turk
The Turk
The Turk, also known as the Mechanical Turk or Automaton Chess Player , was a fake 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 exposed in the early 1820s as an...
and Ajeeb
Ajeeb
Ajeeb was a chess-playing "automaton", created by Charles Hooper , first presented at the Royal Polytechnical Institute in 1868...
, El Ajedrecista was a true automaton built to play chess without human guidance.