Milestone · February 24, 1956

Samuel's checkers on television

Arthur Samuel showed an IBM 701 playing checkers against a person on live television, four months before the Dartmouth workshop.

Why it matters

The first public showing of a machine that plays and improves shaped expectations of computing before the field had a name.

Samuel had been programming checkers on the IBM 701 since 1952. During the broadcast an expert played the machine for about an hour. Thomas Watson Sr. predicted the demonstration would raise IBM stock fifteen points, and it did. Samuel described the self-improvement mechanism only in the 1959 paper.

Event record

Event date

February 24, 1956

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Event date

Verification

Sources gathered automatically · September 17, 2026

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Search and reasoning

ID

evt-0081

Date of the television demonstration; the paper describing the program appeared in 1959.

Sources

primary Some studies in machine learning using the game of checkers
IBM Journal of Research and Development · Published July 1959
archive Some Studies in Machine Learning Using the Game of Checkers (full text)
University of Virginia · Published July 1959

Records that link to this one

Extends Some Studies in Machine Learning Using the Game of Checkers
The paper describes the learning mechanism of the program shown on television in 1956.
Some studies in machine learning using the game of checkers
Related Wiener: the purpose put into the machine
The article's main example is IBM's checkers programs, which learn and beat their own programmer.
Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation (Science 131(3410), JSTOR scan)

Samuel's checkers on television

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