His idea gave each player a fixed period of time at the start of the game, and then added a small amount of time after each move, making it so players wouldn’t be short on time if they needed it. In 1988, world chess champion Bobby Fischer patented an addition to the digital chess clock.

While sand timers brought game times down to a few hours, digital clocks meant that players could now play a game in a couple minutes – necessary for speed games like blitz. The digital clock was more accurate than analog ones, and it could also be programmed, adding creativity to how games could be timed. Three years later, in 1978, an improved clock, called the micromate-180 was produced. In 1975, Joseph Mashi and Jeffrey Ponsor created the first commercially available digital clock named Micromate-80. The digital clock allowed for more sophisticated time controls than the analog clock, but like any prototype, it wasn’t without its fair share of issues. In 1973, the first digital clock was invented by Bruce Cheney, a student at Cornell University. In 1889, the idea of adding a red flag was introduced to indicate to the player that they only had 3 minutes left until their time expired. It was a big step in the right direction towards accurately keeping the duration of the game under a time limit, however there were still drawbacks, including the accuracy of matching the two clocks, and the fact that additional time could not easily be added for more complex time controls. In 1883, Thomas Bright Wilson and Joseph Henry Blackburne invented the analog chess clock, which was used for the first time at a tournament in London. While the sand hourglass timer was a good first step, it wasn’t the most accurate way to keep time, due to temperature changes and humidity effecting the drainage of the sand. Official matches would last on average between 8 and 9 hours, and in 1843, a match between Howard Staunton and Pierre Saint Amant lasted 14 and a half hours! Can you image watching a game go on for that long? Eventually players realized the need for time limits to be established, and chess timers and clocks were invented.Ī sand hourglass timer was first officially used in 1860 at a chess match in London. Before the invention of the chess clock, a game of chess was a serious time commitment.

Chess clock