ChessBase

[4] Starting in 1983, Frederic Friedel and his colleagues put out a magazine Computer-schach und Spiele covering the emerging hobby of computer chess.

Friedel began working with Bonn physicist Matthias Wüllenweber who created the first such database, ChessBase 1.0, as software for the Atari ST.

The August 1991 issue of Computer-schach und Spiele announced that Dutch programmer Frans Morsch's Fritz program would soon be available for purchase as software for PCs.

British grandmaster Daniel King was another early author of such CD-ROMs which eventually grew into the Fritztrainer series of multimedia DVDs.

In December 1996, ChessBase added Mark Uniacke's Hiarcs 6 chess engine to its product line up, selling it inside the existing Fritz graphical user interface (GUI).

[8] In November, ChessBase started offering trainer CD-ROMs by such grandmasters as Robert Hübner, Rainer Knaak and Daniel King.

In April, Meyer-Kahlen and Huber released the Universal Chess Interface (UCI) protocol for engines to communicate with GUIs, to compete with Winboard and ChessBase.

[10] In April 2000, ChessBase released a Young Talents CD featuring the engines Anmon, Goliath Light, Gromit, Ikarus, Patzer, Phalanx and Rudolf Huber's SOS.

[10] In the early 2000s matches were held pitting world champions Garry Kasparov and Vladimir Kramnik against versions of the Fritz or Junior engines.

Eventually, ChessBase commissioned world champions Garry Kasparov, Viswanathan Anand, Vladimir Kramnik and Rustam Kasimdzhanov to produce DVDs using the new format.

ChessBaseUSA[15] markets their products in the United States, and some of their most popular programs are sold by licensee Viva Media, a division of Encore, Inc.

In 1998, the German company Data Becker released the program 3D Schach Genie, containing the Shredder engine and Fritz interface.

In more recent years, Lutz Nebe, Wolfgang Haar and Jeroen van den Belt have also been involved in program development.