Mourning the Demise of Descriptive Notation

Why did FIDE stop recognising descriptive notation?

Given that the FIDE, used to recognise descriptive notation....

I am not looking for people telling me the advantages of algebraic notation.

What was the process that brought about the situation. The situation where I was away from chess for a long time, and the very language I used was now banned. 

What was the politics?

Speculation: it has to do with computers. Descriptive is less concise and more ambiguous. Computer programmers at the beginning were working with limited memory and you could describe a move with far far fewer characters, so they started using algebraic. Soon every just decided it was better. I mean the switch happened around 1980, so it makes sense

Notation

As far as programmers go, it’s more ambiguous and requires additional information in order to disambiguate. For example a pawn capture in Descriptive would be "P x P". But that works only if that is the only pawn capture possible. If there are more than the file and rank must always be given "P(Q4) X P".

So when you’re programming, you constantly have to add additional terms to disambiguate. Algebraic is much more concise, never changes depending on context, and is far easier to program.

As I said, computers also were working with very little memory and every character mattered.

I’m not passing judgment here, I’m just saying that the rise of computers probably caused this. The OP asked why, and this is my guess as to the reason.

AN or algebraic notation was developed in 1737 by Phillip Stamma. 
Descriptive notation was used until 1980 after which it became largely discarded by FIDE by the far more practical algebraic. Descriptive is cumbersome and lends itself to far too many mistakes.

BTW - that advent of computers had nothing to do with FIDE only recognizing algebraic as being the single standard. Algebraic is universal.

Chess authors in publications and books began using the universal language which led to FIDE and other organizations recognizing it as the standard.

Algebraic notation, just like Descriptive, had been around since at least the early Middle Ages as they were used in both Shatranj and Medieval Chess.  Some countries never embraced Descriptive at all. FIDE started requiring recording moves in Algebraic on July 1,1997.  

This auto correct phone app plays tricks ! I had to edit. Also added - it was chess authors in publications that started using the language that led to the change.

I doubt that the rise of computers had nothing to do with FIDE’s changes, though it is not the official reason.

Computers made algebraic more popular, and it was the popularity that caused the official change. FIDE just recognized the obvious: that the world had moved on from descriptive.

Nostalgia for descriptive notation is like nostalgia for imperial measures in almost every way.

 

I have some books in descriptive and others in algebraic.

I grew up on descriptive.

Never even open the descriptive books anymore.

It's pretty much one or the other, and algebraic won, imho.

No Nikki - the changes occurred in the early 8O’s before the general use of computers . It was publications- such as MCO and BCO that adopted the change. These opening books were everybody’s go to tools and read universally. Your assumption is incorrect. Every chess player owned either MCO or BCO which adapted algebraic.

Because whatever mechanization is defined as - it did not lead to algebraic being adopted as the standard by players and publications. This happened before the general use of computers and the language used by them.

I have my father's MCO 11 from 1972, descriptive, Walter Korn, and my purchased MCO 13, Nick DeFirmian, 1990, algebraic, and with 3 dust covers on it.  (It just happened to come that way, and it is the close up picture of some Staunton B&W chess pieces; so cool looking.)

Both books are Hardcover, and to find a "new" copy of MCO-13… well, it costs well over $100, I think, today.  The dustcover lists its price as $24.95.

I’m sure you read me wrong. Programmers had been working on chess long before the widespread use of computers. In fact, I noted that it was in the era of extremely constrained memory that this happened. The computer that Bobby Fischer played was the size of a room and only had 256k of memory. The first home computers like the TRS 80 had like what was it? 4K? Programmers were working on chess from the 1960s and we’re employing algebraic to save space in their programs.

A big difference between the two lies in recording Knight moves. If either Knight can move to the same square- descriptive gets cumbersome and requires more symbols. Mistakes are easily made.

Huh!  Now I understand why the sets had the royal markings on the King's Knight and King's Rook.  (The Bishops would be self explanatory.)  Never thought about that before… I just thought it was to make the pieces on the King's side look cool, as though they were bestowed with heightened grandeur.

Algebraic became the standard because chess publications adopted the practice in the interests of universal appeal. The material could be read by anyone - selling more books and magazines.

Ruined chess. That’s funny. A system that describes chess moves ruins the actual moves? I suppose the French ruined travel by inventing the metric system and forcing people to measure their trip to Tahiti in kilometers. Oh! It’s ruined! I have to weigh the beautiful grains of sand in my hands in grams!!!

Ok. That was funny.

Yep. Also either Rook can move to the same square requiring extra symbols. Besides which - it becomes necessary for the eyes to search the board to determine which Knight or Rook is being referred to. I grew up on descriptive- after years and years of practice still made the errors or had to take extra time when reading publications in descriptive. When algebraic began as general usage - it was almost universally applauded.

My high school's top player used algebraic in 1973, when all the other chess players in the high school still used descriptive.  In 1973, computer chess was still an obscure oddity, so I don't think it had anything to do with computers.  I think it's more likely that the FIDE wanted to move to a language independent notation, since different languages used different initials for the pieces.

Personally, I still find algebraic nearly incomprehensible when looking at the board from the black side.