Hook on chess

Chess on the Factory Floor
by Shelby Lyman

Chess appeals to something deep in the human psyche, explained the novelist and philosopher Ayn Rand.

A character in a play by the German polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe is no less extravagant.

The game, we are told, is the “touchstone of the intellect.”

As if to validate these exceptional claims, the chess fever that accompanied 1972’s epic seven-week match in Reykjavik, Iceland, between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky was contagious and irresistible for many, including the very large number who discovered the game for the first time.

In the United States, the five-hour move-by-move coverage of each of the 21 games by the fledgling PBS network played a major role.

Robert Doutt, a commercial pilot who at the time worked on the factory floor in a GE automotive plant in Erie, Penn., recalled: “Workers were enthralled with the TV coverage and the games. Chessboards cropped up all over the place. They couldn’t get enough. They were hooked.”

They watched PBS whenever they could, bought and read books, engaged each other during lulls — before and after work, during lunch and whenever else it was possible.

Some joined chess clubs.

“Interest was high for a couple of years after that,” said Doutt, who said the central interest was the intellectual challenge his co-workers found in the game.

They deeply admired Bobby Fischer for his ability in meeting that challenge.

“Workers don’t get credit for their smarts,” he told me.

Source: http://www.vnews.com