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

[Devin Monnens]

Andrew,

I contacted the Science Museum Libraries and Archives in the UK to see if
they had it (they list a collection of Babbage's sketches).

Another article I am reading references a journal that briefly describes a
game of Tic-Tac-Toe played on a computer in 1946 on the DEUCE computer
(which seems odd, considering records show the DEUCE was manufactured in the
1950s...maybe it was the prototype Alan Turing was helping build, which
raises MORE interesting questions). Still, it's worth checking out. The
entry is a little vague:

Davies, D.W. *Proc. Inst. Elec. Engrs., (London) Pt. B, Suppl.* 103, 473
(1946).

I believe it stands for Proceedings of the Institution of Electrical
Engineers. I'm trying to get a scan through Interlibrary Loan, but their
scans are less than adequate (I got an article on Oregon Trail where the
text was so low quality I couldn't read the code).

-Devin

On Mon, May 31, 2010 at 1:35 PM, Andrew Armstrong <andrew at aarmstrong.org>wrote:


>  Fascinating research Devin, really interesting, and yeah, I wonder about

> those diagrams.

>

> Andrew

>

>

> On 31/05/2010 18:33, Devin Monnens wrote:

>

> 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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-- 
Devin Monnens
www.deserthat.com

The sleep of Reason produces monsters.
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