Chessboard
Board games have been known since ancient history, with the oldest records being paintings in mastabas of the First and Third Dynasties of Egypt (3100-2700 BC). The first known version of chess appeared around the 6th century in India and was called Chaturanga, played on a board of the game Ashtapada. This board was monochromatic and divided into eight columns by eight rows, with special marks called "castles" in the first, fourth, fifth, and eighth squares of the "a", "d", "e", and "h" columns, which served a function in Ashtapada, but not in Chaturanga.
History of games
First patented in 1904, "The Landlord's Game", designed by Elizabeth Magie, was originally intended to illustrate the economic consequences of Ricardo's Law of Economic rent and the Georgist concept of a single tax on land value. A series of board games were developed from 1906 through the 1930s that involved the buying and selling of land and the development of that land. By 1933, a board game had been created much like the version of modern Monopoly by the Parker Brothers. 
Though the first commercial version of the game of Battleship was "Salvo", published in 1931 in the United States by the Starex company, the game itself dates to before World War I when it was played on paper by Russian officers. The French board game "L'Attaque" was first commercially released in 1910, having been designed two years prior as a military-themed imperfect knowledge game based upon the earlier Chinese children's board game Dou Shou Qi. "L'Attaque" was subsequently adapted by the Chinese into Luzhanqi (or "Lu Zhan Jun Qi"), and by Milton Bradley into Stratego, the latter having been trademarked in 1960 while the former remains in the public domain. Jury Box, published in 1935, was the first murder mystery game which served as the basis for games like Cluedo.