English Chess Forum

Reading this, I think he should have legged it down to the patent office.

From the Nottinghamshire Guardian, Saturday, April 07, 1894

CHESS BY ELECTRICITY.— Mr Gunsberg, in the April number of the "New Review," says:— "I have played a game of chess with an opponent who was neither sitting opposite to me at my board, nor at the same table, nor was he even in the same room with myself. I could neither see his game nor hear his voice. In fact, if he had been at the Antipodes, the means which enabled us to play together would, theoretically, still have held good. The moment a move was played on one table it was registered on the other, no matter whatever the distance between the two boards. There was no signalling, no action of any kind whatever. The registration of the moves was automatic and self-acting. Of course, the players had to move each other's pieces on their respective boards, according to the indications received of each other's."

Does it give the game?

The game is called Kriegspiel.

I do not believe that this is a description of the game of kriegspiel. It is more likely that Gunsberg is describing how he was the operator of Mephisto. In 1879 the automaton came to Brighton and Gunsberg sat in a room below the main hall where Mephisto was being exhibited. By a system of electro-magnetism, Mephisto's moves were recorded on the board below and Gunsberg's moves were transferred upwards. This reference in the newspaper is particularly interesting as Gunsberg was quoted in the Cheltenham Examiner in 1913 as saying that he operated the automaton using radio. His memory was by that time almost certainly playing tricks as this use of radio waves had not been invented in 1879.

The chess correspondent of the Hastings and St. Leonards Observer made the following remarks in his column of 26 October 1929 (page 11):

"Except for one day Mr. Gunsberg was the playing force in touch with "Mephisto", but not in the same room. Magnetism and electricity were the forces that made this possible. This is now well-known, but at the time strong efforts were made to keep it a secret."