Editing FreeCell (section)

== History and variants ==
One of the oldest ancestors of FreeCell is [[Eight Off]]. In the June 1968 edition of ''[[Scientific American]]'', [[Martin Gardner]] described in his "Mathematical Games" column a game by C. L. Baker which is similar to FreeCell, except that cards on the tableau are built by suit rather than by alternate colors. Gardner wrote, "The game was taught to Baker by his father, who in turn learned it from an Englishman during the 1920s."<ref>{{cite journal |title=Mathematical Games |journal=Scientific American |first=Martin |last=Gardner |date=June 1968 |volume=218 |issue=6 |page=114 |doi=10.1038/scientificamerican0668-112|bibcode=1968SciAm.218f.112G }}</ref>  This variant is now called [[Baker's Game]]. FreeCell's origins may date back even further to 1945 and to a Scandinavian game called Napoleon in St. Helena (not the solitaire game [[Napoleon at St Helena]], also known as Forty Thieves).<ref name="FCFAQ" />

Paul Alfille changed Baker's Game by making cards build according to alternate colors, thus creating FreeCell. He implemented the first computerised version as a medical student at the University of Illinois, in the [[TUTOR (programming language)|TUTOR programming language]] for the [[PLATO (computer system)|PLATO]] educational computer system in 1978.<ref>Mark J. P. Wolf ''Before the Crash: Early Video Game History'' 2012 p212 "After Spacewar!, several more games appeared on the PLATO system, including DECWAR (1974, based on “Star Trek”), Empire (1974), a Dungeons & Dragons–inspired game named "dnd" released in 1979, Moria (1975), the original Freecell (1978), and a flight simulator named Airfight..."</ref> Alfille was able to display easily recognizable graphical images of playing cards on the {{nowrap|512 × 512}} monochrome display on the PLATO systems.<ref name="nyt">{{cite news |url=https://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F05E6DE143DF934A25753C1A9649C8B63 |title=One Down, 31,999 to Go: Surrendering to a Solitary Obsession |work=New York Times |last=Kaye |first=Ellen |date=October 17, 2002}}</ref>

This original FreeCell environment allowed games with 4–10 columns and 1–10 cells in addition to the standard {{nowrap|8 × 4}} game. For each variant, the program stored a ranked list of the players with the longest winning streaks. There was also a tournament system that allowed people to compete to win difficult hand-picked deals. Paul Alfille described this early FreeCell environment in more detail in an interview from 2000.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.freecell.net/f/c/alfille.html |title=Interview with Paul Alfille |work=Freecell.net |first=Dennis |last=Cronin |date=May 4, 2000 |access-date=March 4, 2011}}</ref>

In 2012, researchers used [[evolutionary computation]] methods to create winning FreeCell players.<ref>{{cite journal |url=http://www.genetic-programming.org/hc2013/Sipper-Paper.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20151020115006/http://www.genetic-programming.org/hc2013/Sipper-Paper.pdf |archive-date=2015-10-20 |url-status=live |title=Evolutionary Design of FreeCell Solvers |journal=IEEE Transactions on Computational Intelligence and AI in Games |first1=Achiya |last1=Elyasaf |first2=Ami |last2=Hauptman |first3=Moshe |last3=Sipper |volume=4 |issue=4 |pages=270–281 |date=December 2012 |doi=10.1109/TCIAIG.2012.2210423|s2cid=801608 }}</ref>

A variant where card sequence movement is not limited by available cells is known as Relaxed FreeCell.<ref name="FCFAQ" />

Other solitaire games related to or inspired by FreeCell include [[Seahaven Towers]], [[Penguin (solitaire)|Penguin]], [[Stalactites (solitaire)|Stalactites]], ForeCell, Antares (a cross with [[Scorpion (solitaire)|Scorpion]]).