+ Crumbs From The Chess-Board

http://www.amazon.com/Crumbs-From-C...

+ The Fifth American Chess Congress New York 1880

I guess, I'll first need to learn the basic ropes.

see <Charles Kemeny: A Life in Chess - John S. Hilbert (2013) p69, p115>

He also documented the early 5th American Chess Congress (1880), see, for example:

http://www.chessware.de/catalog/cha...

http://www.edochess.ca/batgirl/Fred...

As for his book collection - I hadn't realized that the Silas W. Howard book collection at Harvard that I utilize so extensively traces its heritage, at least in part, to Gilberg's collection:

<The Charles Gilberg Collection

New York businessman Charles Gilberg, a noted problemist (one who composes chess problems), built a major chess collection with an emphasis on fine bindings. After his death in 1898, Gilberg’s heirs kept all his books until their purchase in 1930 by Silas W Howland, who willed the 2,800-volume collection to Harvard University. The Charles Gilberg Collection now forms part of the Rare Book Collection at Harvard’s Houghton Library.>

This isn't quite correct, because the Google scan was done in grayscale (or maybe B&W(?))... consider this diagram:

https://books.google.com/books?id=g...

It's the first diagrammed problem from <Crumbs>, and it looks, at least to my untrained eye, as if all the pieces are Black.

But that's a figment of the scan, for consider this:

<

Gilberg's Problems.

The title "Crumbs from the Chess Board : A selection from the problems composed by Charles A. Gilberg. New York. 1890" — is hardly good enough for a collection of 200 fine problems by a well-known composer, and we know from the author himself that in a probable second edition he intends to Kive a more appropriate title to his book. The work is particularly beautiful, as it is printed in four colours : the fine portrait of the author and the preface are black, the squares pale green, the white men red, and the black men blue. We know of no other work on chess in which the diagrams appear in three colours, for Kling's Chess Euclid, London, 1849, shows the 214 diagrams in two colours (blue and red).

>

tBOP v13 N657 (Aug 15, 1891) 735/773 (24)

So, if you did buy an original copy the diagrams wouldn't look Black on Black, but a glorious RGB, for Biv and everyone else.

https://books.google.com/books?id=J...

However, I have found mention of the printer, P.F. M'Breen ("The Always Ready Printer"):