J. H. Blackburne appeared in 1862, and with Louis Paulsen, the pioneer of the art upon the extended scale, was engaged by the British Chess Association at their International Gathering, in 1862, to give blindfold exhibitions; each played ten games with great success, amid much appreciation.  Mr. Blackburne’s subsequent thirty years blindfold chess is too well known to require comment, he is admitted to be second to none in the exposition of the art, some even claim superiority for him over all others.

Dr. Zukertort, on the 21st December, 1876, at the St. George’s Chess Club, contended blindfold with sixteen competitors, comprising the best players that could be found to oppose him.  From a physiological point of view Zukertort’s powers appear the most extraordinary, because his abstraction for chess was far less pronounced, and his mind seemed to be of a more varied and even discursive kind.  It would scarcely have been less surprising to have seen players like Staunton, Buckle, or Der Lasa performing blindfold chess.

The number of players of all grades of chess force who now can play without seeing the board is amazing; a tournament for blindfold play only could well be held.  The faculty of playing chess blindfold is thought to apply mostly to those who have extraordinary retentive memories of a peculiar kind, and great powers of abstraction very slightly brought into action or diverted by other pursuits.  This seems to be confirmed in considering the great chess exponents who have played blindfold, and those who have not, a comparison has been adduced but which might seem invidious to expatiate on.

Note.  Sachieri, a Jesuit of Turin, who lived in the 17th century, had a most surprising memory.  He could play at chess with three different persons without seeing one of the three boards, his representative only telling him every move of the adversary.  Sachieri would direct him what man to play, and converse with company all the time.  If there happened a dispute about the place of a man, he could repeat every move made by both parties from the beginning of the game, in order to ascertain where the man ought to stand.  He could deliver a sermon an hour long in the same words and order in which he heard it.  This is very remarkable, as the Italian sermons are unmethodical and unconnected, and full of sentences and maxims.

Blackburne does the same.  At one of the few blindfold performances I have witnessed by him, viz., at Montreal, in 1889, during our adjournment to dinner the positions had become disarranged, but Blackburne on resumption called over all the eight games, with great facility, and perfect accuracy, the resumption being delayed not more than five minutes.

The Razi referred to above (called by our medieval writers Rhasis) was a celebrated physician of Bagdad, where he died about A.D. 922.

The Author of the British Museum M.S. says: