The origin of chess.

I have always believed that chess originated in India as that is the mainstream belief.

It turns out however, that the origin is China. Here is an article depicting an incident in which there was some public dispute on the matter.

I recently watched an interesting video in which Stephen Fry spoke on the subject of ancestry, which included allusion to the appreciation of the concept of geometric progression, during which I became aware that the China claim was more widely accepted than I had thought.

So this is roughly how the story goes.

The emperor was bored with the "board-games" available in his empire and offered a reward to anyone who could develop a game which in which there was no chance involved, but which rather relied on nothing but intelligence and the ability to out-maneuver the opponent.

Well it was done. Chess was invented and the man who did it presented it to the emperor. The emperor marveled at the accomplishment and asked the man what he would like as a reward. The said he would like rice, one grain for the first square, 2 grains on the second and so forth.

The emperor was pleased with the request and call servants with a sack of rice who began counting out the rice.

An advisor to the emperor then whispered in the emperors ear and the emperor then ordered the man's head be cut off in return for his request.

The advisor has told the emperor that the amount of rice involved was more than had ever existed.

The rest of the story is told most eloquently by Mr. Fry in the video.

The calculation which produced this reaction is shown below.

Attribution : Embedded
Images : Pixabay and Google Images (labeled for reuse)