Turochamp

Turing attempted to convert the program into executable code for the 1951 Ferranti Mark 1 computer in Manchester, but was unable to do so.

The first successful program in 1951, also developed for the Mark 1, was directly inspired by Turochamp, and was capable only of solving "mate-in-two" problems.

In 1946, Turing wrote a report for the NPL entitled "Proposed Electronic Calculator" that described several projects that he planned to use the ACE for; one of these was a program to play chess.

He gave a reading at the London Mathematical Society the following year in which he presented the idea that a machine programmed to play chess could learn on its own and acquire its own experience.

Subsequently, in 1948, he wrote a new report for the NPL, entitled "Intelligent Machinery", which suggested a form of imitation chess.

[13] In the late summer of 1948 Turing and Champernowne, then his colleague at King's College, Cambridge, devised a system of theoretical rules to determine the next move of a chess game.

[14] According to Jack Copeland, author of several books on Turing, he was not concerned that the program could not be run, as he was convinced that the speed and sophistication of computers would soon rise to make it possible.

Although the match demonstrated that the program could viably play against a human in a full game, it was not run on an actual computer before Turing's death in 1954.

They were unable to find the explanation for the deviation until they consulted with Donald Michie, who suggested that Turing had not been concerned with meticulously working out exactly which move Turochamp would recommend.

[a] The resulting recreation was presented at the Alan Turing Centenary Conference on 22–25 June 2012, in a game with chess grandmaster and former world champion Garry Kasparov.