Deep Blue was one hell of a chess player.
It was February 1996 and the machine developed by IBM was locked in battle with Gary Kasparov. Chess was big news as the computer system project originally begun in 1985 at Carnegie Mellon University attempted to do something other chess-playing devices had been unable to do – beat a reigning world champion.
Even those with only a passing interest in chess like myself were intrigued by the matchup. Deep Blue’s designer said the machine could evaluate 200 million positions per second, and at the time, it was the fastest computer to match up with a world chess champion.