when i was younger i worked in a computer company. there were 3 companies. one company for computer machinery such as electrical typewriters and fotocopying machines. then a company for office desks and chairs. and third a company for computers. all in one building.
so whenever somewhere a company needed new desks, or computers, or other equipment, the company could deliver anything that was needed.
or when somewhere a new company was founded, our company could deliver anything that was needed for the offices.
one day my boss came with an idea: thorsten you are an expert in computerchess, you could sell dedicated chess computers or software in our company too. as a sub-department of the computer-company. so i got 15.000 DM and ordered all kind of dedicated chess computers and software.
my work suddenly was no "work" anymore. i could whole day enjoy computerchess and talking with "customers" was like talking with friends.
that was the day my computerchess department was founded/build.
we had very expensive desks and chairs in our furniture department, and i put the machines onto those wooden desks.
that was a nice time and i had much fun.
a few years before i remember how we beta tested the SciSys Leonardo machine.
i got one of the few and first cheap made Leonardo machines, and could interface it with my home computer.
at its time it came out, the sci sys leonardo was a very cool machine.
you could connect it with a computer and get information and input opening book, games or positions into the memory, read out games and save them in ASCII on disc. PGN was not born at that time.
later chessbase programs were capable to parse the leonardo output via the clipboard. so we had a way to input all the games from chessboard into the PC.
from time to time i got a telephone call from Dirk Frickenschmidt.
He was a friend of mine and we were involved in testing the new ROM versions of the Maestro/analyst modules.
whenever he had a new version from Kaplan, we had heavy traffic on the telephone line and testing began. countless hours of tournament games against all opponent machines.
the feeling of doing something for the first time, the feeling of testing something that is a prototype. that is a very interesting emotion.
P.S.:
In 1986 this "boss" and i travelled to cologne where we tried to help Computer Schach and Spiele organising the computer chess championship.
http://youtu.be/4ttcO4UU9RU
At the time 1986 there was no chessbase company, but wuellenweber had a PRG on ATARI ST later it would be the ChessBaseStarter prg. Wuellenweber never thought of doing a commercial thing. He believed that he could found a CLUB where all chess players could bring in their chess games and there would be a big database for all members of this club. therefore his first programs were for free. Frederic Friedel maybe convinced him that he should make money out of that idea.
At the time of cologne i was a member of the computer schach and spiele team. writing from time to time articles about dedicated chess computers. At the time we used the ATARI ST to enter all chess games that were played during the championship. we tried to get the games DURING the games, so we would not have to enter all games AFTER the event, that would have taken too long. there were no USB Sticks, no universal Floppy Disc stuff. the computers had all different standards.
So we took the notation via hand, input it into the ATARI ST machines.
then it was all printed out on paper!!! we then took a scissor and glue stick and put all the games a master bulletin.
and ran to RANK XEROX. there everything was copied for all the members of the tournament. so that after each round anybody had a copy of all games from the round.
the games were commented during the rounds by IGM Vlastimil Hort, on the youtube video you can listen how he comments the games. Hort was together with GM Helmut Pfleger who is very much known in germany from television because he made tv shows about scientific topics in german school television.
my friend Siggi Schuette later became the boss in the computer company who asked me to do a computerchess department.
And a few years later he changed to be Saitek development manager and moved into the north where the german Saitek company had its new central office.
What seems like a fairy tale today may be reality tomorrow.
Here we have a fairy tale of the day after tomorrow....