Description

This object consists of a wooden box with a hinged lid that contains a folded cardboard chess board, a compartment that holds 32 chess pieces, and an electronic component with a sixteen-button keypad and LED display. Serial No: 16245.

Human players played against “Boris,” a programmed computer that could play at a variety of skill levels. The human player moved their chess pieces on the board and keyed in that pieces originating and final destination on the board. The computer then calculated its move, and put its move locations on the LED screen for the human user to move. The computer also was programmed to provide commentary, and it could provide remarks like “I expected that,” “illegal move,” “Is this a trap?,” and a final “congratulations” if the human user won.

Computer chess has been around since the earliest days of the digital computer. In 1950, Claude Shannon wrote a paper that suggested the possibility that "modern general purpose computers can be used to play a tolerably good game of chess.” Early chess computers were large and cumbersome, however. It was not until the development of a cheap microprocessor that companies could create a small, portable, and (relatively) affordable chess computer for the general public. The Boris Electronic Chess Computer, which ran on the Fairchild F8 microprocessor, was one of the first commercially available toy chess computers.