If you imagine somebody playing chess against the computer, you’ll likely be visualizing them staring at their monitor in deep thought, mouse in hand, ready to drag their digital pawn into play.

Not exactly a household name, but as [IEEE Spectrum] points out, he invented a chess automaton in 1920 that would foreshadow the next century’s obsession with computers playing chess.

Rcently, the world was told that a computer program named Alpha Zero had learned how to beat Stockfish in chess. Stockfish is generally accepted to be one of the world’s best chess computer ...