NIMROD, 1951

by Gonnagan

Came across this via this. NIMROD was a computer built for the Festival of Britain in 1951, and it had only one purpose: To play Nim. Later in the same year it was an exhibit at the Berliner Industrieausstellung, the German minister of economy Ludwig Erhard played against it and lost every time. A replica of NIMROD has now been built for the new Berlin museum of computer games.

NIMROD is older than A. L. Samuel’s Checkers program, and it was a far bigger project (a dedicated computer vs. a program running on an IBM 701), but it seems to be less known. Guess the role of the UK in the history of computer games, and computing in general, is still underestimated quite a bit.