Origins
K/oS Othello 3 well restore the "matérial" of Reversi.
Ben Fry Othello 3, is better to feel the three dimension and th double color of the pieces.
- 1888, Reversi in England
Lewis Waterman invented the Reversi in England, in 1888. Already, there is the 8x8 board, the 64 pieces in two colours (blue and yellow, one visible, one hidden), that are flipped (changing the visible colour). The rules are also here...
Earlier, also in England, in 1870, John W. Mollet invented a game called "The Game of Anexation", which was however, played on a different board.
- 1971, Othello in Japan
In 1971 the japanese Goro Hasegawa, launches Othello, very near of Reversi (one beginning position instead of four, board color is set to green, pieces colors to black and white). He put it as a registered trademark, that today belongs to Tsukuda Original, licensed by Anjar Co.
- 1979, Personal Computer in France
From 1979, after the beginning of the micro computers, and notably the french magazine "l'Ordinateur Individuel" (means "Personnal Computer" = PC), the Othello is very liked by many programmers (because rules are simple). Federations are created and tournaments are growing. Humans fight humans and computers. These programs progressively become the best.
- 1989, Microsoft Windows Reversi in U.S.A.
At the end of the 80', the Microsoft Windows 3.0 is delivered with a game called Reversi. The game is in those days very popular. It is absent from the following Windows versions, and is a little forgotten. In 1996, it has a new interest with the java programmation.
- Reversi
and Ataxx
In an aside, we go to Ataxx, the game presented in our neighbouring Ataxx site. You see, in this picture, that the beginning positions are very different between Reversi and Ataxx, but the "material" is almost the same (two colours pieces, 8x8 board for Reversi, 7x7 for Ataxx, where there are also blocks...). We do some more comparisons in our page The Ataxx principles, and notice that the two games are finally strongly different. We have also seen, in a neighbouring page, that The Ataxx origins are not similar to the Reversi ones.