ISBN: 161039786X | 2017 | EPUB | 304 Pages | 4 MB
Humans have dreamed of intelligent machines since long before the technology to attempt one was conceived. In the late eighteenth century, a chess-playing mechanical automaton called the “Turk” was a wonder of the age. A carved wooden figure moved the pieces and, most remarkably, played a very strong game. Before it was destroyed in a fire in 1854, the Turk toured Europe and the Americas to great acclaim, claiming among its victims the famous chess aficionados Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin.
CHESS IS OLD ENOUGH for its origins to be less than entirely clear. Most histories place the origins of the chess precursor game chaturanga in India sometime before the sixth century. From there chess moved to Persia and into the Arab and Muslim world, where it followed the well-trod path into southern Europe via Moorish Spain. By the time of the late Middle Ages, it was a standard presence in the courts of Europe and appears regularly in manuscripts from the period.
Download: