The idea of creating a
chess-playing machine dates back to the eighteenth century. Around
1769, the chess playing
automaton called
The Turk became famous before being exposed as a
hoax. Before the development of
digital computing, serious trials based on automatons such as
El Ajedrecista of 1912, were too complex and limited to be useful for playing full games of chess. The field of mechanical chess research languished until the advent of the digital computer in the 1950s. Since then, chess enthusiasts and
computer engineers have built, with increasing degrees of seriousness and success, chess-playing machines and computer programs.
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