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Checkers (video Game)
''Checkers'', also called ''Draughts'', is a 1952 video game developed by British computer scientist Christopher Strachey. A simulation of the board game of the same name, it first became operational during the summer of 1952 on the Ferranti Mark 1 computer at the University of Manchester. ''Checkers'' began development in early 1951 when Strachey joined the National Physical Laboratory, which had just succeeded in building a prototype computer called the Pilot ACE, based on Alan Turing’s Automatic Computing Engine. To familiarize himself with programming on this machine, Strachey wrote a checkers program inspired by the article ''A Theory of Chess and Noughts and Crosses'', published in 1950. He was also influenced in his choice by Charles Babbage, his analytical engine, and his proposals for chess and checkers games. However, programming errors, the computer’s lack of power, and frequent hardware changes to the platform prevented the game from working correctly. In the sp ...
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Ferranti Mark 1
The Ferranti Mark 1, also known as the Manchester Electronic Computer in its sales literature, and thus sometimes called the Manchester Ferranti, was produced by British electrical engineering firm Ferranti Ltd. It was the world's first commercially available electronic general-purpose stored-program digital computer. Although preceded as a commercial digital computer by the BINAC and the Z4, the Z4 was electromechanical and lacked software programmability, while BINAC never operated successfully after delivery. The Ferranti Mark 1 was "the tidied up and commercialised version of the Manchester Mark I". The first machine was delivered to the Victoria University of Manchester in February 1951 (publicly demonstrated in July) ahead of the UNIVAC I which was delivered to the United States Census Bureau in late December 1952, having been sold on 31 March 1951. History and specifications Based on the Manchester Mark 1, which was designed at the University of Manchester by Fred ...
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Artificial Intelligence In Video Games
In video games, artificial intelligence (AI) is used to generate responsive, adaptive or intelligent behaviors primarily in non-playable characters (NPCs) similar to human-like intelligence. Artificial intelligence has been an integral part of video games since their inception in 1948, first seen in the game ''Nim''. AI in video games is a distinct subfield and differs from academic AI. It serves to improve the game-player experience rather than machine learning or decision making. During the golden age of arcade video games the idea of AI opponents was largely popularized in the form of graduated difficulty levels, distinct movement patterns, and in-game events dependent on the player's input. Modern games often implement existing techniques such as pathfinding and decision trees to guide the actions of NPCs. AI is often used in mechanisms which are not immediately visible to the user, such as data mining and procedural-content generation. One of the most infamous example ...
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Bitboard
A bitboard is a specialized bit array data structure commonly used in computer systems that play board games, where each bit corresponds to a game board space or piece. This allows parallel bitwise operations to set or query the game state, or determine moves or plays in the game. Bits in the same bitboard relate to each other by the rules of the game, often forming a game position when taken together. Other bitboards are commonly used as masks to transform or answer queries about positions. Bitboards are applicable to any game whose progress is represented by the state of, or presence of pieces on, discrete spaces of a gameboard, by mapping of the space states to bits in the data structure. Bitboards are a more efficient alternative board representation to the traditional ''mailbox'' representation, where each piece or space on the board is an array element. Bitboards are especially effective when the associated bits of various related states on the board fit into a single w ...
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Cathode-ray Tube
A cathode-ray tube (CRT) is a vacuum tube containing one or more electron guns, which emit electron beams that are manipulated to display images on a phosphorescent screen. The images may represent electrical waveforms on an oscilloscope, a Film frame, frame of video on an Analog television, analog television set (TV), Digital imaging, digital raster graphics on a computer monitor, or other phenomena like radar targets. A CRT in a TV is commonly called a picture tube. CRTs have also been Williams tube, used as memory devices, in which case the screen is not intended to be visible to an observer. The term ''cathode ray'' was used to describe electron beams when they were first discovered, before it was understood that what was emitted from the cathode was a beam of electrons. In CRT TVs and computer monitors, the entire front area of the tube is scanned repeatedly and systematically in a fixed pattern called a raster scan, raster. In color devices, an image is produced by con ...
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Heuristic
A heuristic or heuristic technique (''problem solving'', '' mental shortcut'', ''rule of thumb'') is any approach to problem solving that employs a pragmatic method that is not fully optimized, perfected, or rationalized, but is nevertheless "good enough" as an approximation or attribute substitution. Where finding an optimal solution is impossible or impractical, heuristic methods can be used to speed up the process of finding a satisfactory solution. Heuristics can be mental shortcuts that ease the cognitive load of making a decision. Context Gigerenzer & Gaissmaier (2011) state that sub-sets of ''strategy'' include heuristics, regression analysis, and Bayesian inference. Heuristics are strategies based on rules to generate optimal decisions, like the anchoring effect and utility maximization problem. These strategies depend on using readily accessible, though loosely applicable, information to control problem solving in human beings, machines and abstract i ...
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Checkers
Checkers (American English), also known as draughts (; English in the Commonwealth of Nations, Commonwealth English), is a group of Abstract strategy game, strategy board games for two players which involve forward movements of uniform game pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over opponent pieces. Checkers is developed from alquerque. The term "checkers" derives from the Check (pattern), checkered board which the game is played on, whereas "draughts" derives from the verb "to draw" or "to move". The most popular forms of checkers in Anglophone countries are American checkers (also called English draughts), which is played on an 8×8 checkerboard; Russian draughts, Turkish draughts and Armenian draughts, all of them on an 8×8 board; and international draughts, played on a 10×10 board – with the latter widely played in many countries worldwide. There are many other variants played on 8×8 boards. Canadian checkers and Malaysian/Singaporean checkers (also locally known ...
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Early History Of Video Games
The history of video games spans a period of time between the invention of the first electronic games and today, covering many inventions and developments. Video game, Video gaming reached mainstream popularity in the 1970s and 1980s, when arcade game, arcade video games, Video game console, gaming consoles and PC game, home computer games were introduced to the general public. Since then, video gaming has become a popular form of entertainment and a part of popular culture, modern culture in most parts of the world. The early history of video games, therefore, covers the period of time between the first Interactivity, interactive electronic game with an electronic display in 1947, the first true video games in the early 1950s, and the rise of early arcade video games in the 1970s (''Pong'' and the beginning of the first generation of video game consoles with the Magnavox Odyssey, both in 1972). During this time there was a wide range of devices and inventions corresponding with ...
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IBM 701
The IBM 701 Electronic Data Processing Machine, known as the Defense Calculator while in development, was IBM’s first commercial scientific computer and its first series production mainframe computer, which was announced to the public on May 21, 1952. It was designed and developed by Jerrier Haddad and Nathaniel Rochester and was based on the IAS machine at Princeton. The IBM 701 was the first computer in the IBM 700/7000 series, which were IBM’s high-end computers until the arrival of the IBM System/360 in 1964. The business-oriented sibling of the 701 was the IBM 702 and a lower-cost general-purpose sibling was the IBM 650, which gained fame as the first mass-produced computer. History IBM 701 competed with Remington Rand's UNIVAC 1103 in the scientific computation market. In early 1954, a committee of the Joint Chiefs of Staff requested that the two machines be compared for the purpose of using them for a Joint Numerical Weather Prediction project. Based on the t ...
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Toronto
Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the List of North American cities by population, fourth-most populous city in North America. The city is the anchor of the Golden Horseshoe, an urban agglomeration of 9,765,188 people (as of 2021) surrounding the western end of Lake Ontario, while the Greater Toronto Area proper had a 2021 population of 6,712,341. As of 2024, the census metropolitan area had an estimated population of 7,106,379. Toronto is an international centre of business, finance, arts, sports, and culture, and is recognized as one of the most multiculturalism, multicultural and cosmopolitanism, cosmopolitan cities in the world. Indigenous peoples in Canada, Indigenous peoples have travelled through and inhabited the Toronto area, ...
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Arthur Samuel (computer Scientist)
Arthur Lee Samuel (December 5, 1901 – July 29, 1990) was an American pioneer in the field of computer gaming and artificial intelligence. He popularized the term "machine learning" in 1959. The Samuel Checkers-playing Program was among the world's first successful self-learning programs, and as such a very early demonstration of the fundamental concept of artificial intelligence (AI). He was also a senior member in the TeX community who devoted much time giving personal attention to the needs of users and wrote an early TeX manual in 1983. Biography Samuel was born on December 5, 1901, in Emporia, Kansas, and graduated from the College of Emporia in Kansas in 1923. He received a master's degree in Electrical Engineering from MIT in 1926, and taught for two years as an instructor. In 1928, he joined Bell Laboratories, where he worked mostly on vacuum tubes, including improvements of radar during World War II. He developed a gas-discharge transmit-receive switch (TR tube) that ...
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EDSAC
The Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC) was an early British computer. Inspired by John von Neumann's seminal ''First Draft of a Report on the EDVAC'', the machine was constructed by Maurice Wilkes and his team at the University of Cambridge Mathematical Laboratory in England to provide a service to the university. EDSAC was the second electronic digital stored-program computer, after the Manchester Mark 1, to go into regular service. Later the project was supported by J. Lyons and Co., J. Lyons & Co. Ltd., intending to develop a commercially applied computer and resulting in Lyons' development of the LEO (computer), LEO I, based on the EDSAC design. Work on EDSAC started during 1947, and it ran its first programs on 6 May 1949, when it calculated a table of square numbers and a list of prime numbers. EDSAC was finally shut down on 11 July 1958, having been superseded by EDSAC 2, which remained in use until 1965. Project and plan The concept ...
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Sandy Douglas
Alexander Shafto "Sandy" Douglas CBE (21 May 1921 – 29 April 2010) was a British professor of computer science, credited with creating the first graphical computer game, OXO, a version of noughts and crosses, in 1952 on the EDSAC computer at University of Cambridge. Biography Early life Douglas was born on 21 May 1921 in London. At age eight, his family moved to Cromwell Road, near what would become the London Air Terminal. A 74 bus ride for one old penny took me to Exhibition Road, from which I could go towards South Kensington station to my father's office (which is still there) and workshop (now demolished) down by what became the Lycée Français. Alternatively, I could turn north to the Science Museum – a trip I took often. In the winter of 1938–39, Douglas and his future wife Andrey Parker made a snowman in the grounds of the Natural History Museum. Douglas and his wife would go on to have two children and at least two grandsons. During the Blitz, in 194 ...
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