Morphy's famous match with Paulson is one of the first matches where it was realized that some type of timing device (chess clock) would be required as the skill levels of players and the seriousness of tournaments continued to improve. Paulson really took advantage of the limitless time, and take hours to complete a chess game. Morphy was famous for moving fast. Because he was such a natural tactical chess player, paired with the fact that he completely outclassed almost all of his opponents, he would play rather quickly. Paulson was the opposite extreme, who needed time to brutfully calculate all the positions, and take all the time possible to try to stay on the board with Morphy.

While Morphy, not wanting to appear impatient, sat expressionless at the board, Paulsen would at time take up to two hours for a single move.

It was realized that these marathon chess games, with Paulson taking all the time, was not really condusive to the "sport" of chess. If they would have let it continue to go that way, chess would have become the laughing stock of spectator sports.

To try to deal with this problem time controls where put on the match where each move was timed with a timer.

Later on in tournament play, huge hour glasses were used. Both players would have a hour glass and they would turn it over when they completed their move. Eventually this would lead to the mechanical chess clock, an apparatus with two clocks with a start stop device.

Today chess clocks are a fundamental part of tournament and casual (speed chess) play.

And what happened with the matches between Paulson and Morphy? The normally cool tempered Morphy after an 11 hour marathon game with Paulson was so infuriated with his long moves that he slammed his fist on the table and said, "Paulsen shall never win another game from me as long as he lives!" And Paulsen didn't,