Timeline of Chess - 19th Century

19th Century

• 1802 - Earliest known American chess book, Chess Made Easy, by J. Humphreys.
• 1813 - The Liverpool Mercury prints the world's earliest chess column.
• 1824 - Earliest known British correspondence chess match, London-Edinburgh.
• 1830 - Earliest recorded instance of a modern female chess player.
• 1834 - Earliest recorded international challenge match: Alexander McDonnell (Ireland) versus Louis de la Bourdonnais (France) at the Westminster Chess Club, London.
• 1843 - Howard Staunton (England) wins a match against Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant (France) in Paris.
• 1845 - Telegraph is used to transmit moves in a match between London and Portsmouth.
• 1846 - Deutsche Schachzeitung is the first German chess magazine.
• 1848 - Earliest known instance of a game played between blind players.
• 1849 - Staunton chess set created by Nathaniel Cook.
• 1851 - First international tournament is held in London, and won by Adolf Anderssen.
• 1852 - Sandglasses are first used to time a game.
• 1857 - First American Chess Congress, won by 20 year old Paul Morphy, causes a chess epidemic across the U.S.
• 1857 - The UK Chess Association is formed.
• 1858 - The California Chess Congress is held in San Francisco, won by Selim Franklin
• 1859 - Paul Morphy declared unofficial world champion after two years of international play
• 1861 - Games played via transoceanic cables (Dublin-Liverpool).
• 1867 - Mechanical game clocks are introduced in tournament play.
• 1870 - Earliest recorded tournament in Germany (Baden-Baden).
• 1871 - Durand publishes the first book on endgames.
• 1873 - The Neustadtl score system is first used in a tournament.
• 1877 - Formation of the Deutsche Schachbund.
• 1879 - First New Zealand Chess Championship, the longest running national chess championship in the world.
• 1883 - Invention of Forsyth notation.
• 1884 - Paul Morphy dies.
• 1886 - First official World Chess Championship match held between Wilhelm Steinitz and Johannes Zukertort. Steinitz wins decisively with the score 12½-7½ to become the first official world champion.
• 1888 - First international correspondence tournament.
• 1888 - U.S. Chess Championship starts.
• 1894 - Emmanuel Lasker defeats Wilhelm Steinitz in a world championship match to become the second official world champion.
• 1895 - Hastings 1895 chess tournament at Hastings, England.
• 1899 - Chess clocks now have timeout flags.