Ray Charles' Chess Set

The fact that Ray Charles was a chess enthusiast has been blogged about:

• Would You Play Chess Against Ray Charles?
• Remembering The Passion Of Ray Charles For Chess
• etc.

And forum'd about:

• Willie Nelson v Ray Charles
• Ray Charles, a 1600!
• etc.

But did you know that, as I write, you can view Ray's Talking Chess Computer at the Country Music Hall of Fame?

This image came to me courtesy of Nashvilledough.

The placard reads:

The model looks to me list a board customization of Radio Shack Electronic Talking Chess Computer 60-2255, which "Speaks 365 phrases."

This is in the lineage of Excalibur Chess Products designed by Ron Nelson.

Ronald (Ron) Nelson, is

an American electrical engineer, microcomputer chess pioneer, and Engineering Vice President for Excalibur Electronics, since 2010 in retirement. In 1976 he already developed a chess program for an Altair 8800 Microcomputer with an Intel 8080 CPU. Coincidentally, his friend was secretary at Fidelity Electronics owned by Sidney Samole, who just had the idea to build a dedicated chess computer and was looking for a programmer and engineer. Ron got immediately hired by Samole, and they constructed and build several Fidelity Chess Challenger Prototypes, three working models and four non-working models. Sidney Samole decided to promote their brainchild at Chicago's Consumer Electronics Show in January 1977...