The night the machine won

On 11 May 1997, the world chess champion lost a duel against a cabinet of computers that calculated two hundred million positions a second.

Garry Kasparov, probably the greatest player in history up to that point, fell to Deep Blue, the IBM machine, by 3.5 to 2.5 in a six-game match in New York. It was the rematch: the year before, Kasparov had won. This time, after a blunder in the final game, the champion rose from the board with a look of disbelief that travelled around the world. For the first time, a machine had beaten the reigning world champion in a duel under tournament conditions.

The moral aged fast: the chess engine you carry for free on your phone is now far superior to that Deep Blue. The extraordinary became routine in a single generation.

Source: Computer History Museum