A technological milestone is not just a triumph, but a rare, pivotal watershed: Orville Wright's first flight, NASA's landing on the moon¿the victory of a digital computer, Deep Blue, over world chess champion Garry Kasparov in 1997.

"Deep Blue: An Artificial Intelligence Milestone" details the historic endeavor to develop a chess-playing computer that would outplay the best human player on Earth. The story tells of the super-talented team of scientists and engineers involved, how one of America's mightiest corporations nurtured that team, and how the team's hard work produced a machine that played epic battles against human beings before eventually proving victorious. Deep Blue's success raises many questions about our future relationship with the digital computer.

Topics and features:

* Offers a comprehensive record of Deep Blue's Development

* Gives the reader insight into the ups and downs of the deep Blue team on its way to finally defeating Gary Kasparov

* Includes appendices that completely record Deep Blue's matches

* Provides many photographs of the participants involved in the journey

* Analyzes Deep Blue's evolution from "hostile force" to "champion" in popular cartoons appearing in newspapers.

The work provides a comprehensive and authoritative account of the creation, development, and actions of IBM's Deep Blue technology group and how their computer defeated the world chess champion. Specialists and nonspecialists in AI and computing will discover a fascinating story of one of the major technological milestones in the history of computer science, as well as science in general.