User:P64/Bridge/Vugraph

Screenshot. This code links to a screenshot that now 2011-05-26 appears in the Vugraph article. Two months ago the 180px version was deleted from this page (in my user space) per copyright policy.

NEWWHIST

Vugraph (or Viewgraph) is a method of displaying the bidding and play of bridge hands on a screen for viewing by an audience. The basis of the current computer-generated display was originally developed by Fred Gitelman for the American Contract Bridge League in 1991 under a grant from the estate of Peter Pender. Then known as PenderGraph, the software program was first used at the 1991 Summer North American Bridge Championships at Las Vegas. The program was substantially revised in 1993 to work under the Microsoft Windows operating system.

WORKING

Vugraph (or viewgraph) is the presentation of contract bridge on a screen or board. (Encyclopedia)

(notes 2011-03-29. Relying partly on OEB1 48, 664; OEB4 42, 533)

Vugraph may be specifically the use of overhead projection from reusable transparent plastic slides ("viewgraph" in one sense), which was commonly employed at major events for about thirty years beginning in the 1960s. Vugraph may be the representation of bidding and play using human recorders and symbolic display (usually almost live) rather than photography and telecast (usually live).

1930s electro(?) mechanical display used in department store exhibitions. Much as earlier displays of baseball games in progress, except that bridge was played on-site rather than observed elsewhere and reported by telegraph.

1958 Bridge-o-Rama on-site electro-mechanical display of bidding and play. developed in Italy and first used at the 1958 world championship in Como, Italy.

Before 1964, vugraph in the narrow sense. It appears that vugraph never was a trademark, although the first Encyclopedia uses "Vu-Graph". By the fourth edition, revised to "Vugraph" and supplemented by "viewgraph". By 1971 vugraph dominated Bridge-o-rama because of cost, time and manpower.

>>In the 80s various electronic Vugraphs of considerable sophistication were introduced in Italy, Netherlands and elsewhere, with all the entries on the projected image controlled by a computer.<< (OEB5)

All three of these symbolic displays and also closed circuit television were used on-site, with play at tables in two rooms and presentation onscreen in another room equipped with many chairs theater-style. usually with microphone commentary.

In 1990 Peter Pender bequeathed money to improve vugraph (by electronic computer & localnet?) to the ACBL, which made arrangements with Fred Gitelman two years later, for the development of software that was named PenderGraph. For onsite presentation, the new system links one human recorder at the table, using a keyboard, directly with a computer projector in the exhibition hall. commonly with live microphone commentary, but no longer essentially with any staff in the exhibition hall.

PenderGraph is still the namne of BBInc. vugraph computer program. Evidently the entire system for onsite presentation was once called PenderGraph and there has been discussion of perpetuating that by a term such as PenderGraph Theater.

Bridge Base Online (BBO) uses the current generation of PenderGraph both to present face-to-face bridge using a human recorder at the table and to display the game among internet players, as few as human player and three robots. ASK Gitelman

From 2009(?) at latest, BBO uses its viewgraph software PenderGraph and human recorders at both tables to to present by internet selected team matches from innumerable national and international matches.

table-side observer-recorders with keyboard coding site computer network and exhibition hall screen-side commentators with microphone vugraph computer program PG

Traditionally the only real-time spectators for bridge were people sitting or standing around a card table where the four players were seated. The rules of the game did and still do cover some activities by such kibitzers. (Duplicate Law 76, American edition 1997 http://web2.acbl.org/laws/proprieties.htm)

Bridge Base Online
The dominant vugraph software is PenderGraph by Fred Gitelman, the founder and president of Bridge Base Inc., whose Bridge Base Online uses the program both to broadcast play to a world-wide audience and to support online play. The American Contract Bridge League uses it to present important matches in exhibition halls on-site at major tournaments. The first edition was commissioned by the ACBL in 1991.(Encyclopedia)