Chess Machine

Five years ago, in the Chelsea district of Manhattan, stood the Eden Musee, noted for its wax figures of history's horrible episodes and its automatic checker player. This machine, mathematically inspired, was able to beat the shrewdest human players.

In fact, it was once said that, if an inventor could make a machine to play chess, he would have little trouble in producing a thinking machine. Yet, last week, the French Academy of Sciences admitted Leonardo Torres y Quevodo, mathematician from Madrid, to associate membership because he effectively demonstrated a chess-playing machine. Senor Quevodo's automaton meets all emergencies of the game when less than half of the chessmen are on the board; is even able to stop playing in case its human opponent cheats.