In 1844 there were already people playing chess online, although not in the way you are thinking

On November 18, 1844, the Washington Chess Club challenged their Baltimore counterparts to a game. Nothing out of the ordinary, except for one detail: the Baltimore players were still in Baltimore, and the Washington players remained in their city, separated by a distance of about 60 kilometers.

The feat was achieved thanks to the Internet of the time: the electric telegraph. And just six months after Samuel Morse inaugurated the first telegraph line in the United States with the message “What has God wrought?”

The origin of an idea. Just like relates IEEE Spectrum, it all started days before with a game of checkers. On November 15, Alfred Vail, Morse’s associate in Washington, proposed to Henry Rogers in Baltimore to play by telegraph. Rogers devised a system of numbered squares to communicate positions, and the idea soon evolved into chess, at which time both clubs challenged each other from their respective cities.

An ingenious system for transmitting plays. Vail and Rogers assigned a unique number to each of the 64 squares on the board. In this way, each shift was summarized in transmitting two numbers by telegraph. In this sense, chess was ideal for a test with said device, since it requires little information per move and does not need a complex communication channel.

During the games, 686 moves were transmitted with almost no errors, as Vail recorded in his magnetic telegraph journal, which is now It is preserved in the Smithsonian.

More than just entertainment. Although it began simply as a test leading to a little private pleasure between two enthusiasts, telegraphic chess soon attracted public and political attention. Orrin S. Wood, a telegraph operator, wrote to his brother-in-law on December 5, 1844, about the “considerable excitement” generated by these items, adding that many congressmen seemed interested.

Morse took advantage of the moment, for in his letter to the Secretary of the Treasury to obtain financing and expand the network to New York, he argued that the telegraph could transmit news from Congress or the whereabouts of wanted criminals, but he also noted that several games of chess had been played “with the same ease as if the players were sitting at the same table.”

Encrypted information system. The organizers of these games considered that they had devised a pure information system that fit perfectly with the possibilities of the media that were beginning to emerge at the time. And if we think about it, each play was a precise and brief data packet that traveled through copper cables.

However, the initiative generated controversy, since on December 5, Rogers warned Vail that they were causing “an unfavorable impression on the religious part of the community”, although it is currently unknown what the complaints were. What is known is that on December 17, 1844, chess was no longer played along those lines.

A tradition that lasted. Just like account In the middle, in 1845 a game was played between London and Gosport with the participation of the inventor Charles Wheatstone and the teacher Howard Staunton. Decades later, between 1890 and 1920, confrontations between clubs by telegraph became common.

As time went by and new technologies developed, playing chess from two different places became increasingly easier. In 1965, grandmaster Bobby Fischer played from New York against opponents in Havana by teletype, since the State Department prevented him from traveling to Cuba. And if we go even further, in 1999, world champion Garry Kasparov He faced a team that represented “the world” through a Microsoft forum.

Chess as proof of inventions. Today, millions of daily games are played online around the world through platforms such as Chess.com. The truth is that chess has become a kind of natural companion for each new means of communication that has emerged throughout history. Despite how difficult it is to master all the legs of this game, the information needed for the games to flow is extremely simple. And perhaps that is why, 181 years after that first game via telegraph, chess continues to endure in the digital age.

Cover image | Denis Volkov

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