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Tangential curiosity I didn't knew,

> The first chess programs were written in the early fifties, one by Turing himself

When readed that I wondered in what computer could possibly that chess program ran. The amazing answer is: nowhere. Turing executed himself the orders of the program he wrote acting as cpu.

http://chessprogramming.wikispaces.com/Alan+Turing#Chess%20a...

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A chess-playing computer had been suggested as early as 1864, and the first machine able to carry out a "program" was invented in Spain in 1914 by the engineer Leonardo Torres-Quevedo and called Ajedrecista http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Ajedrecista

Site in general is NSFW, this specific comic has some swearing.

Disclamer aside, I always thought this was a pretty hilarious alternative to real automation, in the spirit of the xkcd security wrench.

http://media.oglaf.com/comic/theautomaton.jpg

Kasparov played a game against that program too, for the Turing centenary celebrations: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrxdWkjmhKg

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