On the first of March, 1849, the English Patent Office granted a patent to a chess game. Champion player Howard Staunton was honored to give his name to the new design that is still appreciated and loved all over the world.
Howard Staunton didn’t have an easy childhood. He was born in 1810, and was probably an illegitimate child of Frederic Howard, earl of Carlisle. The rich Staunton family ignored the boy completely and he didn’t receive much education. His future opponents found in this the reason for his arrogance and nasty character traits.
Tournament victories and articles on chess
Staunton moved to London in 1836 where he first learned about a new phenomenon: chess clubs with professional players and exciting tournaments. It awoke his interest. In the years that followed he won nearly all the competitions he entered in. In the forties he even became world champion and a national hero. Not only was he a passionate chess player, he also was a passionate writer. He published a chess magazine, wrote a manual for chess players and in 1845 Illustrated London News hired him to write articles about the game. In these articles he promoted the chess game and criticized played matches. His fellow chess players weren’t always happy with that.
Howard Staunton plays Pierre st. Armant in 1843
Chess becomes professional
Chess clubs grew fast and started sponsoring or organizing tournaments themselves. They placed advertisements and the press wrote about the strategies used and the winners of the matches. The game became well known and got more and more professional.
For the first time in history, chess became an organized sport. An important consequence of this was the standardization of the game to make it accessible to all players. To this effect a points system and a time limit (the predecessor of the chess clock) were implemented.
Chess pieces were still a problem though. The clubs made their own tournament pieces that weren’t very good really. They were difficult to handle and not very recognizable. Players that had never seen the pieces before had problems distinguishing them. This put them in an unfavorable position before they had even started the match. The demand for a universal design grew and John Jaques, a game designer from London, rose to the challenge.
The new design had to comply with some criteria though. The chess pieces had to be recognizable internationally and be manageable. Also production costs couldn’t be too high. Nathaniel Cook, Jaques’ brother in law, was involved in the design process. On March first of 1849 he had the patent for the new design registered. Cook was also Staunton’s editor and asked the champion to give his name to the design. Staunton happily agreed, to increase the popularity of the game.
Staunton style goes worldwide
The chess game went on sale in September of that year and Staunton put his autograph on the first five hundred sets that were made. In his newspaper column he celebrated the perfection of the new design and mocked all other chess games. This made Staunton the first celebrity to advertise a commercial product. He made a success of it and the somewhat elitist chess game came within reach of the common man. The new design was also a huge success at chess tournaments. Within no time at all the ‘Staunton style’ became the standard for competitions. Presently the Staunton design is still the most popular one worldwide.
And, what about Staunton? In 1851 he organized the first international chess tournament and put England on the map as the most important chess nation of the world. Shortly after that he had to stop competing in tournaments because of poor health. He now focused on writing about Shakespeare but his love for chess would never die. After his death on the 22nd of June 1874, his unfinished manuscript ‘Chess: Theory and Practice’, was found and published posthumously in 1876. It would be a best seller for years. By 1935, twenty-one more editions had been printed. After that, competition arose. New books, discussing new rules and tactics of the game, found their way to the stores and these up to date publications banned the old-fashioned Staunton from the bookshelves bit by bit.
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