An Early Danish Computer Game - The Case of Nim, Piet Hein, and Regnecentralen.
Anker Helms Jørgensen · 2007
This paper reports on the development of Nimbi, which is an early computer implemented at the Danish Computer Company Regnecentralen in 1962-63. Nimbi is a variant of the ancient Nim. The paper traces the primary origins of the development of Nimbi. These include a mathematical analysis from 1901 of Nim that killed the game as the outcome could be pre- dicted quite easily; the desire of the Danish inventor Piet Hein to make a that eluded such analyses; and the desire of Piet Hein to have computers play games against humans. The development of Nimbi was successful in spite of considerable technical obstacles. However, it seems that the was not used for publicizing the capabilities of computers - at least not widely - as was the case with earlier Nim implementations, such as the British Nim-playing com- puter Nimrod in 1951.