At the start of 1996, the attention of the world's media was gripped by an event that seemingly questioned whether human beings were the most intelligent entities on planet Earth. This book relates the history of a 200-year-old quest. A quest which culminated in the grand chess match between World Champion Garry Kasparov and IBM's Deep Blue. Facing each other were the strongest chessplayer in the history of the game and a computer that could analyse over 500 million moves per secong. This match sought to test the truth of Goethe's assertion that chess is the supreme 'touchstone of the intellect'.