The Inventor of Chess.
"Who invented chess?" asks a Knight who lives in Arkansas.
An Arabian mathematician named Sessa, the son of Daher, is supposed to have invented the game of chess. According to Al-Sephadi, the reigning prince was so pleased with the invention that he promised Sessa any reward he might desire. The mathematician asked for a grain of wheat for the first square of the chess-board, two for the second, four for the third, and so on to the sixty-fourth square. The prince was rather angry at first, considering it a stain on his liberality to be asked for such a paltry present. He gradually cooled down, however, when his Grand Vizier reported a total of 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 grains, or 31,274,997,412,295 bushels. If we suppose that one acre of land is capable of producing 30 bushels of wheat in one year, this enormous quantity would require 1,042,499,913,743 acres, or more than eight times the surface of the globe, at a cost of about $312,749,974,123.90.