History of the electronic chess board

After the successful introduction of the Digital Game Timer in 1994, DGT Projects was looking for options to broaden the base of the company.

The development of an affordable electronic chess board was the natural challenge, as chess and electronics are the core of the expertise of the company founders.

A few technologies were on the market. Some for tournament presentation, different ones to combine with the PC at home.
Most systems worked with touch and push connections, a few with individual pieces recognition. All boards were extremely expensive and “live” tournament presentation on the internet was only affordable for top level, well sponsored events as most systems needed professional attention to correct technical instability.

The development target of R&D director Ben Bulsink was a good looking, tournament size chess board, that would be easy to use, reliable and affordable, combining the functions of “Joy-Stick” for home use and data collection in tournament settings.

During the world championship in December 1997, DGT marketing director Albert Vasse told the partners at the FIDE board that we were almost ready to start the production.
In February 1998, FIDE was knocking at our door, asking if we were able to supply for the Elista Chess Olympiad in September with a system of some 300 electronic boards, integrated into one network, to collect all data for “live” internet presentation as well as the gamescore for the printed daily bulletin.

We said: “Yes, we will do it.”

It turned out to be a hard target to reach, stumbling on a lot of technical problems to solve between the development paper and real production.

The higher the challenge, the greater the satisfaction if one succeeds.

At the start of the Olympiad, 328 DGT e-boards were up and running. FIDE had not arranged enough capacity to get all the games “live” on the internet, but the system developed by DGT Projects functioned smoothly.

Since Elista 1998 about 4000 DGT e-boards have been produced.

DGT e-boards with USB connection are available, the software for tournament presentation has improved immensely and the new DGT XL chess clock has build in options for two way communication with the board.

All major commercial Chess Programs for PC can communicate directly with the board.

Several sites on the internet support the use of the board to play against opponents on the other side of the planet and the number of tournaments that are able to present their games “live” on the internet has multiplied since the introduction of the DGT e-board.

Millions of chess lovers around the world are enjoying the games brought to them with DGT e-board technology and DGT ToMa software.

DGT Projects has again made a major contribution to the development of chess for the 21st century.