Checkers (1952 video game)

Checkers, also called Draughts, is a 1952 video game developed by British computer scientist Christopher Strachey. A simulation of the board game of the same name, it first became operational during the summer of 1952 on the Ferranti Mark 1 computer at the University of Manchester. Checkers began development in early 1951 when Strachey joined the National Physical Laboratory, which had just succeeded in building a prototype computer called the Pilot ACE, based on Alan Turing’s Automatic Computing Engine. To familiarize himself with programming on this machine, Strachey wrote a checkers program inspired by the article A Theory of Chess and Noughts and Crosses, published in 1950. He was also influenced in his choice by Charles Babbage, his analytical engine, and his proposals for chess and checkers games. However, programming errors, the computer’s lack of power, and frequent hardware changes to the platform prevented the game from working correctly. In the spring of 1952, Strachey learned that the University of Manchester owned the Ferranti Mark 1; a computer more powerful than the ACE. He then went to the Computing Machine Laboratory in Manchester, where he met Turing. Encouraged by him, Strachey made numerous improvements to Checkers, which by July 1952 was running at a playable speed.

Checkers was the first game to run on a general-purpose Turing-complete computer, as opposed to games such as Bertie the Brain, which ran on dedicated machines. The game was also one of the first to incorporate a form of artificial intelligence; it was preceded only by the chess program Turochamp, designed by Turing in 1948. It is also the first to use a graphical display. At the time when Strachey ported Checkers to the Mark 1 and succeeded in making it work in 1952, the tic-tac-toe video game OXO was designed by Alexander S. Douglas on the EDSAC. OXO and Strachey's program are some of the oldest games to offer a visual display on an electronic screen. Most works on the subject consider OXO to be the first video game in history, although some observers believe it is difficult to determine which of the two was the first to become functional. The game also inspired Arthur Samuel, who discovered it the same year in Toronto, Canada, during a conference where Strachey described Checkers. Samuel then developed his own version of the game in 1952 on the IBM 701. Checkers would fade into obscurity in the following years, being largely forgotten until renewed interest in the early history of video games in the 21st century brought it to prominence.