Chess games of the rich and famous: IBM 360, circa 1974

IBM 360/195 playing chess, November 1974, probably in the world computer chess championships. MASTER Team, from left: Alex Bell, Peter Kent, John Birmingham, John Waldron (a British chess player)

Annual Report, C & A Division, Rutherford Laboratories, United Kingdom, 1974.

No details are offered in the 1974 report; it appears that the machine is playing someone at a remote location, linked by telephone. According to the report, “The only major hardware change made to the IBM System 195 Central Computer during 1974 was the addition in March of a third megabyte of main core. The system has now given consistently high performance for a period of three years and from this experience it is now possible to predict its maximum capability when fully loaded.”

At another section of the Rutherford Lab’s online materials you can view a short history of computer chess playing.