Throwback Tech: 20 years ago, a computer won against a chess world champion

Twenty years ago on February 10, 1996, IBM chess-playing computer, Deep Blue, faced off against 32-year-old chess master, Garry Kasparov, in a six-game match at a convention center in Philadelphia.

Kasparov was famous for his aggressive and uncompromising style of play, and had been named a world champion at age 22. Deep Blue was a 6-foot-5-inch 2,800-pound supercomputer developed by a team of IBM scientists.

Of the six games played, the computer won two, including the first. Approximately six million viewers tuned in via the Internet to watch the artificial intelligence unfold. Ultimately however, Kasparov won the match.

But a year later, in 1997, the two faced off again. This time, Deep Blue took the victory and won the six-game match with a score of 3.5 to 2.5.

The initial 1996 game marked the first time a computer ever defeated a world chess champion. Developed at Carnegie Mellon University, Deep Blue was created specifically to solve complex numerical problems and defeat a human chess champion, by computing 200 million positions per second. 

As computers presently beat humans at chess more frequently, 20 years ago when technology wasn’t as advanced, it was a huge deal. Even back then, these devices were beginning to stun us by winning the battle between man and machine.

Since 1996, artificial intelligence has gotten an even bigger victory. Google created Alpha Go, which is a program capable of defeating a champion human Go player. Go is an ancient Chinese game considered to be much more difficult than chess.

Source: Mashable