Editing Chess clock (section)

=== Early development of digital game clocks ===
[[File:DGT 2010 digital chess clock.ajb.jpg|alt=A brown chess clock with blue buttons along the bottom. A digital display shows the time remaining for each side|thumb|Digital chess clock]]
In 1973, to address the issues with analog clocks, [[Bruce Cheney]], a [[Cornell University]] electrical engineering (EE) student and chess player, created the first digital chess clock as a project for an undergraduate EE course.<ref>"Early Bird", ''[[Chess Life]]'', April 1992.</ref> Typical of most inventions, it was crude compared to the products on the market many years later and was limited by the technology that existed at the time. For example, the display was implemented via red LEDs, which required significant power and, as a result, the clock had to be plugged into a wall outlet. The high cost of LEDs at the time meant that only one set of digits could be displayed: that of the player whose turn it was to move. This meant that each player's time had to be multiplexed to the display when their time was running. In 1973, [[Large-Scale Integration#SSI, MSI and LSI|LSI]] chips were not readily or cheaply available, so all the multiplexing and logic was enabled using chips consisting of four two-input [[Transistor–transistor logic|TTL NAND gates]], resulting in excessive power consumption. Being plugged into the wall is obviously a major drawback, but had one advantage: [[Utility frequency#Stability|the timebase for the clock was driven off a rectified version of the alternating current mains frequency]]. Each player had a separate counter and, in a parallel to the original mechanical architecture, one player's counter was disabled while the other's was running. The clock only had one mode: time ran forward. It could be reset, but not set. It did not count the number of moves. But it successfully addressed the original goals of the project (accurate and matched timing).

The first commercially available digital chess clock was patented in 1975 by Joseph Meshi and Jeffrey R. Ponsor. They named it the Micromate-80.<ref>{{cite patent |country=US |number=4062180 |status=patent |title=Electronic chess clock |gdate= 1977-12-13 |fdate= 1975-07-31 |invent1= Meshi, Joseph |invent2= Ponsor, Jeffrey R.}}; filed July 1975.</ref> There was only one made<ref>{{Cite web|title=Chess clock - Rules and strategy of chess games|url=http://gambiter.com/chess/chess_clock.html|access-date=2020-10-15|website=gambiter.com}}</ref> and this was tested by chess players in multiple tournaments. Three years later a much-improved Micromate-180 was produced alongside Meshi's MBA [[thesis]], "Demand Analysis for a New Product (The Digital Chess Clock)", at [[San Diego State University]], while Meshi and Ponsor continued to develop digital gaming.<ref name=":0">{{cite patent |country=US |number=4247925 |status=patent |title=Game microcomputer |gdate= 1981-01-27 |fdate= 1978-07-13 |invent1= Meshi, Joseph |invent2= Ponsor, Jeffrey R.}}; filed January 1978.</ref>