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Lefty the robot was
built in 1984 at the Omniplex
Science Museum. located in
Oklahoma City, OK. His debut was Thanksgiving day
1984 and he drew a record attendance crowd for
the museum. Shortly after his debut, Channel 4, a
local TV station, invited Lefty to be on their
Oklahoma City Around-Town-News show called
Danny's Day. Here is a short
MPG clip of Lefty
making his first move
against his opponent on Live-broadcast TV. This
516K / 30 second MPG clip is optimized for 28.8
modems.
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Lefty was comprised of an Atari 800 computer
(A popular computer back in 1984) and a computer
interface concept that was to eventually evolve into the OOPic.
This interface controlled Lefty's 5 stepper motors, 5
motor position sensors, and a user keyboard. The user
keyboard was used so that "John Q Public" could
not access the operating system components of the Atari.
The checkers algorithm was handled in Atari
Basic. It started out quite simple but as time went by,
the program grew to a point that it was virtually
unbeatable. This was not the best idea for a museum
because a new player would give up quickly. So one of the
"Checks" was removed to give Lefty a handicap.
Unfortunately, Lefty is no longer a display at
the museum. Mechanical wear and tear maintenance has
exceeded the allowable budget and so lefty was hauled to
the back room to collect dust. (The last I heard was
someone "found" him amidst the stacks of old
IBM-XTs and painted him yellow. (A new life for lefty
just might be in the future.)
Be sure to check-out the other robots found
at:
and
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Lefty