The Chess Playing Turk Automaton
The magic trick that astounded the world was not made by a magician. It was not even intended to be a magic trick. It was a challenge and from the challenge one of the most interesting stories about magic and robots came to be.
- Maria Theresa of Austria had a performance planned for her court in 1769 to watch a demonstration of magnetic tricks.
- Her counselor, a Hungarian scientist Wolfgang Von Kempelen was unimpressed and said he could do better He returned in 1770 to perform, the creation took him six months.
- Created a life-size automaton. The Turkish chess player. He showed the court all of the mechanics. All the court saw was the gears and rods that would make the automaton move.
- The automaton was wound up ready to play, and a member of the court was chosen to play chess against the automaton.
- The court reported to hearing whirrs and clicks as the automation moved its' pieces.
- The automaton nodded twice to signal the check and three times for checkmate off its' opponent.
- The chess-playing Turk Automaton gathered many famous challengers playing and defeating Benjamin Franklin and Napolean Bonaparte. Edgar Allan Poe wrote an essay about the automaton.
- Wolfgang was not a magician he was a naturalist, a scientist, an architect, and a hydraulic engineer.
- The automaton had a long “life” touring Europe and the Americas for 84 years.
- The device was later purchased in 1804 and exhibited by Johann Nepomuk Mälzel. Maazel installed a voice box in the automaton that would say check whenever it cornered its’ opponent's king.
- Maazel set up the game with Napolean. It was said that the emperor, who ultimately lost, attempted to cheat multiple times with the automaton shaking its’ head and placing the chess piece back where it had been.
- How did a machine play chess? How did it account for variables and strategy? You are going to have to think outside the box to solve this puzzle.
- If you did not guess don’t feel badly. This automaton confounded most of the world. The gears were a front. A hidden cabinet exited where a very small chess master could fit inside the secret compartment and play using puppeteering levers and dangling metal discs that were attracted to the magnets at the base of the chess pieces.
- The chess masters who secretly operated it included Johann Allgaier, Boncourt, Aaron Alexandre, William Lewis, Jacques Mouret, and William Schlumberger, but the operators within the mechanism during Kempelen's original tour remain a mystery.
- The illusion was completely shattered when Maelzel died unexpectedly in 1838 and the automaton was taken by one of his creditors.
- The original automaton was destroyed in a fire but there are reproductions. John Gaughan spent a reported 120,000 to build his own version in 1984. It uses the original chess board which had not been destroyed in the fire. It ran not with a human chess master but with a computer running a chess program.
Bibliography:
Magic 1400’s-1950’s
Daniel, Noel Caveney, Mike Jay, Ricky and Steinmeyer Jim
Taschen
Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Turk
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