Draughts

Draughts

Console: PC
TV Standard: Region Not Set
Release Date: 1952-07-01
Players: 1
Co-op: No
ESRB: Not Rated
Type: Life Simulation
Draughts fanartDraughts screenshot

Draughts is often considered the first video game ever invented. In his spare time, Christopher Strachey developed a program for the game of draughts (also known as "checkers"), which he finished a preliminary version in May 1951. The game completely exhausted the Pilot ACE's memory. The draughts program tried to run for the first time on 30 July 1951 at NPL, but was unsuccessful due to program errors. When Strachey heard about the Manchester Mark 1, which had a much bigger memory, he asked his former fellow-student Alan Turing for the manual and transcribed his program into the operation codes of that machine by around October 1951. By the summer of 1952, the program could "play a complete game of Draughts at a reasonable speed".