Alex Bernstein & Colleagues Program an IBM 704 Computer to Defeat an Inexperienced Human Opponent

Circa 1957
IBM programmer Alex Bernstein playing his chess program at the console of the 704 mainframe. Bernstein told the computer what move to make by flipping the switches on the front panel. The pro
"IBM programmer Alex Bernstein playing his chess program at the console of the 704 mainframe. Bernstein told the computer what move to make by flipping the switches on the front panel. The program took about eight minutes to calculate each move." (Photograph taken in 1958).
Around 1957 IBM programmers led bfy American mathematician, chess player, and computer chess pioneer Alex Bernstein, including 
Michael de V. Roberts, Timothy Arbuckle and Martin Belsky, developed The Bernstein Chess Program, the first complete chess program, on an IBM 704 computer. The program was effective enough to defeat an inexperienced human opponent. Bernstein's program employed the Type B Strategy proposed by Claude Shannon in his 1950 paper, Programming a Computer for Playing Chess.

Bernstein and Roberts published a semi-popular account of their research as "Computer v. Chess-Player," Scientific American, June, 1958, 96-105. They concluded that article stating “there are some glimmerings of ideas about how to program a machine to avoid repeating its mistakes, and some day – not overnight – we may have machines which will improve their game as they gain experience in play against their human opponents.”

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