Author: James T. Walker
Date: 06:34:31 07/15/04
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On July 15, 2004 at 08:34:44, steven blincoe wrote: >>As far as commercial programs, the Spracklin's Fidelity Chess Challenger and >>Boris were the two I remember first. I'm not sure who programmed Boris. > > >the first dedicated chess computer was programmed by Ron Nelson,who is the >progammer for Excalibur's current line of chess computers.. >he actually invented the first dedicated unit and was involved with the hardware >as well as the chess program >he also pioneered the use of the voice chip (and motion detectors )in use in >many chess computers to this very day > >the Spracklin's started with Applied Concepts and stayed with them through the >Sargon 2.5 release..then switched to Fidelity > > >Steve Hello Steve, I can add a little story to the Spraklins change of companies. I forgot the exact year but they had already released Sargon 2.5 and were working on Sargon 3. It was entered in a tournament in California as was a program called "MyChess" by David Kittenger. I already owned an Applied Concepts Sargon 2.5 thanks to Steve (ICD). I entered the tournament and volunteered to play Sargon 3 just to see how good it played. I won my game probably because I had experience with Sargon 2.5 which was still new. I then was paired with MyChess which was operated by a friend of David K. I believe David was working in Alaska at the time. I missed a win with Mychess. I became friends with the operator (sorry I can't remember his name now). There was a big Electronics show in San Francisco later and David Kittenger came down to get MyChess ready to play an "exibition" match vs Sargon 2.5 at the show. I was asked to meet David (by the mutual friend) at a restaurant because he wanted to borrow my Sargon 2.5 and do some "tweaking" on his program to get it ready. He had it for about 3 days. The Spraklins showed up at the Electronics Fair with Sargon 3 (not finalized yet) and lost to MyChess. There was a man from Fidelity Electronics there and I believe they were negotiating already. I don't think the loss to MyChess helped any but they did end up at Fidelity after that. By the way while at the restaurant David played a "blindfold" game vs Sargon 2.5 on a low level and won. Jim
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