Feb 10 2009
Deep Blue Wins The First Round
On this day in 1996, world chess champion Gary Kasparov loses the first game of a six game match against Deep Blue, an IBM chess playing computer.
Chip Test was the code name of a project that started at the Carnegie Mellon University to develop a computer that can play chess, this was followed by the Deep Thought project. Following their graduation from the university, Thomas Anantharaman and Murray Campbell, the developers of Deep Thought were hired by IBM Research to continue their quest to build a computer that could defeat the world chess champion.
Deep Thought first played Gary Kasparov in 1989, and later IBM renamed the machine to Deep Blue. A scaled down version of Deep Blue played chess grandmaster Joel Benjamin, who later was signed on to the project at IBM and wrote the opening book for the computer and was instrumental in the programming to prepare Deep Blue to play Gary Kasparov.
Deep Blue becomes the first machine to beat the world chess champion in regular chess game time controls. This first game is famous as it was won by the computer, however Gary went on to beat Deep Blue in a final score of 4 – 2. The match concluded on February 17, 1996.
