Dr. Tim Dallas, and his students Ashwin Vijaysai and Granapathy Sivakumar, have just created a SPICE Chess Set with the dimension of 1mm x 1mm. This was created out of the MEMS lab (MicroElectroMechanical Systems) at Texas Tech University. The SPICE Chess Set even has the SPICE logo on it 🙂
Here is the link to 32 pictures of this 1mm x 1mm chess set.
Great job by Dr. Dallas and his students!
Last year, I reported about the world’s smallest chess set here. The dimension of that set is 0.25 cm.
Om April 2008, it was reported that a Russian man created a chess set with the dimension of 3.5 mm by 2.5 mm.
The SPICE Chess Set is smaller than both of these sets.
Chess Daily News from Susan Polgar
Susan Polgar
October 8, 2009
Chess Research, Shop, SPICE / Webster, Susan's Personal Blog
10 Comments
A beautiful chess set indeed!
And…
Happy birthday to GM Wesley So! May he receive such a wonderful present for his birthday!
What is truly amazing in my mind is that it actually possible to move the pieces on this tiny chess board! One could actually play the tiniest chess game of all time.
Dr. H. R. Karlsson
Faculty Advisor for the Knight Raiders
Member of SPICE
Clarification
The 1×1 mm are the dimensions of the board! The pieces are even smaller than that. The references being made here to other chess sets may actually apply to the pieces. Our pieces are sub-millimeter in diameter.
Regards,
Dr. Karlsson
Sorry to ask, but what is the practical significance of this minute chess set? Are we running out of space for regular-sized chess boards?
I think the world has a zillion other problems that desperately need your intelligent minds.
Is this not a world record?
Call the Guinness people!
This surely has to be the worlds smallest chess set. Does anyone know of anything smaller?
I agree about calling Guiness and getting in the record books, before someone else comes out with a 0.9mm chess set!
This makes a good pocket set.
Tim Dallas’s team designed the chess set on the microchip along with a host of other MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems) applications on the same chip. Basically Dallas et al. built the chess set because they found it challenging. Often one application considered “useless” can lead to the discovery of another highly useful one (take electricity for example). Experience and programming that comes from operating the chess pieces with the microgrippers may have implications for other highly useful applications (e.g., eye surgery). Who would have thought writing chess programs would have lead to development of new decision-making software?
MEMS applications include “smart dust” (will be used to monitor weather, pollution etc.) being developed at UC Berkeley, and various micro-tools for medical purposes.
Sincerely,
Dr. Karlsson
UT Dallas doesn’t have this world class technology promoting chess! I wonder why?
Thats a great set, i wonder if you were to buy one of these whats the chances of it getting lost in the post. lol