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There are 10^32 or so configurations of Chess pieces on 8x8. Tom Standage
writes ''Computers are unquestionably the modern descendants of
automata: they are 'self-moving machines' in the sense that they blindly
follow a preordained series of instructions, but rather than moving
physical parts, computers move information. Just like automata before
them, computers operate at intersection between science, commerce and
entertainment.'' We are comparing automata from 17th, 18th and 19th centuries --
''The Conflagration of Moscow,'' ''The Slack-Rope Dancers,'' Chess
player ''The Turk'' -- with modern computers. In 1937 Alan Turing
published ''On Computable Numbers.'' ''The chess machine is an
ideal one to start with for several reasons. The problem is sharply
defined, both in the allowed operations and ultimate goal. It is neither
so simple as to be trivial or too difficult for satisfactory solution. And
such a machine could be pitted against human opponent, giving clear measure
of the machine's ability in this kind of reasoning,'' writes Claude
Shannon in 1950 ''A Chess-playing Machine.''  All of Turing, John von
Neumann, and Oskar Morgenstein  were also thinking before, during, and
after World War II  about the possibility of programming computers to
play chess. [Source: Tom Standage 'The Turk' 2002]