[game_preservation] Babbage's Tic-Tac-Toe Machine

[Devin Monnens]

Found a reference to Babbage's Tic-Tac-Toe machine in a book on programming
computers to play games. The relevant section is found towards the end of
Chapter 34 of Babbage's 1864 book *Passages from the Life of a Philosopher*.
The book has been republished several times and is now in the public domain.
It's not on Project Gutenberg yet, but there's a Google
Book<http://books.google.com/books?id=Fa1JAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA441&lpg=PA441&dq=babbage+%22contributions+to+human+knowledge&source=bl&ots=w0aua3ktVB&sig=1qTrgJg5849hMnGHRRV7tASa4zE&hl=en&ei=Zt8DTN-2B4P6NaLBrTs&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBkQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q&f=false>
beginning
Page 465.

In it, Babbage describes how he designed the machine as a means of funding
his Analytical Engine. He noted that machines could play any game of 'purely
intellectual skill', and further that the automaton could win provided it
did not make a mistake. He describes an algorithm by which the game would
calculate each move (and later how it could choose between two or three
equally good moves). Quickly discovering chess would be far too complex for
his machines and so settled on Tic-Tac-Toe. Babbage states he drew up some
blueprints and describes how the machine would look. His proposal was for
the production of six machines, two for three locations (one is a backup in
case of parts failure). The machine was never built because he discovered it
would take too much of his time to build and maintain and would probably not
generate a profit.

I suppose the question I have is whether those blueprints still exist.
Perhaps some graduate student might develop an interest in building one, but
if the diagrams still exist today, they would be the earliest documentation
of a game-playing computer (or at the very least, a mechanical device for
same).

-Devin

-- 
Devin Monnens
www.deserthat.com

The sleep of Reason produces monsters.
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