2026-10-01 · history
Nim (1901) — The First Stone-Taking Game to Be Solved, and the Machines That Played It
In 1901 Charles Bouton of Harvard named a stone-taking game 'Nim' and published its complete winning method. Write the heaps in binary, add column by column, and aim for zero: win and loss become visible. The logic grew into the Sprague–Grundy theorem and gave rise to game-playing machines, the 1940 Nimatron and the 1951 Nimrod. This essay traces what a solved game left to the history of puzzles and computing, using only facts that could be backed by sources.
