Real and fake history December 28, 2004
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Erratum

It turns out that our cute litte story about the RAND Corporation computer projection from 1954 was inaccurate. The picture we published, which was incidentally submitted by one of our readers, turned out to be a fake. Actually a "fark", since it was part of a Fark Photoshop competition. We apologise for not spotting the inplausibility of the story, especially since we are frequent visitors to this very devious web site, and have in fact linked to chess examples in the past. However, it is good to know that we are not the only ones who fell for the joke.

A full unraveling of the hoax may be found at Snopes, a site one should visit before one publishes anything at all. Snopes does admit that predictions from several decades ago failed to foresee that computers would become much smaller and cheaper; that these changes would enable nearly every business and home to have its own computer to be used for a variety of applications, and that those machines would be linked together in a world-wide network. Instead, futurist scenarios frequently presented a world of very few, very expensive all-powerful computers the size of large buildings, used only for divining answers to complex problems beyond the ability of man to solve on his own.

ChessBase on the Arari ST

Here's a true story from the bronze age of computing. We wrote it ourselves, but checked at Snopes anyway and found no debunking story. You never know these days...

Seventeen years ago, in January 1987, the first version of our chess database program was completed. ChessBase was the name we gave to it, and it came on a black 360 KB diskette which you stuck into your Atari ST. Now I know that some of you may have a bit of difficulty with that sentence, so here goes: the “Atari ST” was a very popular home computer.

The ST was based on Motorola’s 68000 processor, which ran at a blazing eight MHz. The system hat one MByte of RAM, which was a sensational amount at the time. The Atari had a very sharp black-and-white monitor, the kind Macintosh had pioneered. The full system, including monitor and disk drive (but without a hard disk) cost 3200 DM (German Marks). You could also get an “IBM PC” with a similar performance, but that was three times more expensive. A ten-pack of diskettes cost DM 120.

An early version of Garry Kasparov working with ChessBase 2.0 on the Atari ST

Today we are able to purchase a system for a nominally similar price – 1,600 Euros, not corrected for inflation (actually €1,600 is closer to DM 1,600). However, we get a little more value for the money. The processor is 400 times faster, the memory a thousand times larger, and you have four hundred thousand times more storage space than we had on one of the four-Dollar diskettes we actually worked with (the first hard disks for the Atari were to have 20 Mbytes).

Rudolph revisited

A word to our first Christmas puzzle this year. Bob Dunnigan, of Jacksonville, Fl., informs us (as did others) that it was very apt for us to discuss the writing of the 'Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer'. Johnny Marks, the song's composer ( who also wrote many other popular Christmas tunes ), was a devoted chessplayer. He was member of New York's Marshall Chess Club and served on the Club's Board of Governors for many years. While a junior member of the Club, Bob writes, he recalls seeing him there frequently.

Which, in some convoluted way, takes us back to our Christmas puzzles. Before we give you the new tasks here, for the most desperate of our readers ("these problems are really, really hard," was a common message we received) is the solution to John Nunn's third proof game problem.

Ernest C. Mortimer; version by Andrei Frolkin

Proof game 3: Position after Black’s 4th move

Solution: Three black units are gone in the above position. It is easy to deduce that they were captured by the white knight on its moves 2-4, with the sequence 1 Nf3 e5 2 Nxe5. But it looks impossible for White to take the d-pawn and the g8-knight as well. And indeed there isn’t enough time for White to take the g8-knight and the d-pawn. The solution is that White takes the b8-knight instead! So the correct sequence is 1 Nf3 e5 2 N×e5 Ne7 3 N×d7 Nec6 4 N×b8 N×b8. Here the paradoxical element is that the apparently unmoved knight on b8 is actually Black’s kingside knight.

For those of you who still find these problems really, really hard, here's a fairly simply one, composed and published this year.

Proof game 5: Position after Black’s 4th move.

And here, for all the disheartened and discouraged masses, is another fairly simple problem. It is from a simultaneous exhibition given by Emanuel Lasker, who at the time had been World Champion for almost twenty years.

Emanuel Lasker – Loman, 1913

Lasker had tricked his opponent in this essentially drawn position and set him up for a stunning combination: 1.Rf8+ Kxf8 2.gxh7 and the h-pawn will queen. As Lasker approched the board during his next circuit he was astonished to see his opponent continuing to play instead of resigning graciously. Ach, ja, there is always one in every simultaneous exhibition. But a move later Lasker discovered that he had overlooked a little finesse. Which one?

F. Köhnlein, Deutsches Wochenschach 1903

White to play and mate in four moves

If you think of it, this position is trivially easy to win – in five moves. For instance 1.b8Q Kd4 2.h8Q+ Ke3 3.Qbe5+ Kd2 4.Qh6+ Kd1 5.Bb3 mate, and there are countless other variations. However, it is much more difficult to do it in the stipulated four moves. And the question is: what is the special point of this study? Once again you can print out the three puzzles to solve on a chessboard.

Frederic Friedel