Throughout
history there are many examples of the Nim game that were developed by
different countries and cultures. There is evidence of origination of
Nim in China, claiming that this game came from the Chinese. Long ago,
the Nim game was called the “picking stones game.” The more
recent word “Nim,” was borrowed from the German word “nimm” which
meant “ to take." As early as 1901 a man named Charles Bouton from Harvard University
analyzed the game of Nim. Nim is a type of game called combinatorial
games, meaning that the games are found to have had a combination of
outcomes. Charles used the game to show that there were advantages in
using the binary number system. The binary number system helped him to
determine the correct moves in a game developed a theory for consistently
winning a game of Nim. So as you’ve read, Charles Bouton used Nim in mathematics in early
1901, although there was evidence of Nim before Bouton's time the game
of Nim is still essentially the same.
