The Bernstein Chess Program

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The Bernstein Chess Program, was the first complete chess program, developed around 1957 at Service Bureau Corporation, Madison & 59th Street, Manhattan, New York City, by chess player and programmer at IBM, Alex Bernstein with his colleagues Michael de V. Roberts, Timothy Arbuckle and Martin Belsky, supported by chess advisor Arthur Bisguier , who became IBM employee at that time and in 1957 international chess grandmaster, and supervised by Nathaniel Rochester. Pamela McCorduck, who was married to Joseph F. Traub, interviewed Alex Bernstein as published with several details given on the development of the program in her seminal book Machines Who Think.

=Quote= As mentioned by John McCarthy, the Bernstein Chess Program under construction was presented at the 1956 Dartmouth workshop: Alex Bernstein of IBM presented his chess program under construction. My reaction was to invent and recommend to him alpha-beta pruning. He was unconvinced.

=Shannon Type B= The Bernstein Chess Program was the prototype of a selective forward pruning, Shannon Type B program. On an IBM 704, one of the last vacuum tube computers, it searched four plies minimax in around 8 minutes, considering seven most plausible moves from each position and evaluated material, mobility, area control and king defense.

=Publications=
 * Alex Bernstein, Michael de V. Roberts (1958). Computer vs. Chess-Player. Scientific American, Vol. 198, reprinted 1988 in Computer Chess Compendium
 * Alex Bernstein (1958). A Chess Playing Program for the IBM 704. Chess Review, July 1958
 * Alex Bernstein, Michael de V. Roberts, Timothy Arbuckle, Martin Belsky (1958). A chess playing program for the IBM 704. Proceedings of the 1958 Western Joint Computer Conference
 * Fritz Leiber (1962). The 64-Square Madhouse. Worlds of If
 * Pamela McCorduck (1979). Machines Who Think. W. H. Freeman
 * Pamela McCorduck (2004). Machines Who Think: A Personal Inquiry into the History and Prospects of Artificial Intelligence. A. K. Peters (25th anniversary edition)

=External Links=
 * Alex Bernstein from The Computer History Museum
 * Classic Computer Chess - ... The programs of yesteryear by Carey, hosted by the Internet Archive
 * Photos by Andreas Feininger, Getty Images
 * Chess Pieces - IBM Research the Deep Blue site
 * Runner-Up - The New Yorker - November 29, 1958
 * Alex Bernstein: juega al ajedrez con un IBM 704 (Thinking Machines), YouTube Video

=References=

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