Dan Spracklen
Daniel Spracklen (* around 1944 in Decatur , Illinois ) is an American computer scientist and computer chess pioneer . Together with his wife Kathe , he developed the Sargon computer chess program in the late 1970s . In the early 1980s, the couple wrote the software for the Chess Challenger chess computer for the US company Fidelity Electronics and won the world championship title at the microcomputer chess championship four times between 1980 and 1984 .
Life
Dan Spracklen was trained in mathematics at San Diego State College and worked as a computer programmer from 1965 . In 1974 he met his future wife Kathe Spracklen . Inspired by the BASIC - Listing of an unfinished chess program , which the couple Spracklen fell by 1977 in the hands, they decided to try it yourself. They opted for the much more efficient assembler and used the 8-bit Z80 microprocessor from the American company Zilog , which had only recently appeared on the market . The first version of their chess program Sargon was published in 1978 and in the same year won the chess computer tournament at the West Coast Computer Faire, which took place from March 3rd to 5th in San José , California .
At the beginning of the 1980s, they began developing programs for the Chess Challenger series of chess computers from Fidelity Electronics and won the World Championship title for microcomputers ( WMCCC ) four times in a row with the Fidelity Champion X and the Fidelity Elite (picture ).
Publications (selection)
- Sargon - A Computer Chess Program with Kathe Spracklen, Hayden Book Company, 1978, ISBN 0-810-45155-7
- First Steps in Computer Chess Programming with Kathe Spracklen in BYTE , Vol. 3, No. 10, October 1978
Web links
- Portrait photo (1978) accessed November 21, 2017
- Photo of the Spracklens (1978) accessed November 21, 2017
- Photo (1979) with Kathe and Sargon 2.5, accessed November 21, 2017
- Photo of Kathe and Dan Spracklen in the early 1990s. Retrieved November 21, 2017
- Game developments by Dan Spracklen on MobyGames accessed on November 21, 2017
Individual evidence
- ^ Bio / Description from IT History Society accessed on November 21, 2017
- ^ Bio / Description from IT History Society accessed on November 21, 2017
- ↑ FIDELITY wins in Budapest in Computerschach International (CSI), No. 4, 1983, p. 4
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Spracklen, Dan |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Spracklen, Daniel (full name) |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | American computer scientist and computer chess pioneer |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 1944 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Decatur , Illinois |