EXPERIMENTS IN CHESS, JAMES KISTER; PAUL STEIN; STANISLAW ULAM; WILLIAM WALDEN; AND MIKE WELLS

In Journal of the Association for Computing Machinery 4 (April 1957): 174-77. Together with The World Computer Chess Championship by Hayes and Levy (1976).

Preliminary report on chess programming for MANIAC I, the first time a computer beat a human in a chess-like game.

The chess program for the Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integrator and Computer, developed by John von Neumann and Nicholas Metropolis at Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory, was created in 1956. Due to limited computing power, the program used a simplified 6x6 chess variant, known as Los Alamos Chess, omitting bishops, double-step pawns, and castling. The program was developed by H-bomb researchers Stanislaw Ulam, Paul Stein, Mark Wells, James Kister, William Walden, and John Pasta.

9¹⁄₂ in. ( 24.3 cm.) high, 6.7 in. ( 17.1 cm.) wide

Jeremy Norman; Christie's New York, 23 February 2005, lot 142.
Whence acquired by the late owner.

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