The Turk

The Turk was a famous chess-playing automaton first constructed and unveiled in 1769 by Wolfgang von Kempelen (1734-1804). It had the appearance of a maplewood cabinet 4 feet long by 2 feet deep and 3 feet high, with a mannequin dressed in cloak and turban seated behind it. The cabinet had doors that opened to reveal interal clockwork mechanisms, and when activated the mechanism appeared to be able to play a strong game of chess against a human opponent. However, the Turk was really a hoax; the cabinet was a cleverly constructed illusion that allowed a man to hide inside and operate the mannequin.

Kempelen first exhibited the Turk at the court of Austrian Empress Maria Theresa in 1770, and later took it on a tour of Europe for several years during the 1780s. During this time the Turk was exhibited in Paris where Benjamin Franklin played it and lost. In 1809 the Turk defeated Napoleon Bonaparte at SchÃÂÃÂ¶nbrunn, during the Wagram campaign. Charles Babbage, the computing pioneer, played against the Turk in 1820. Edgar Allan Poe wrote an expose of the automaton, much of it cribbed from an earlier English account, in 1835. The format of his report on the Turk prefigured his later invention of the detective story.

After Kempelen's death in 1804, the Turk passed through many hands. The secret of its operation was well-kept, however, and although many people suspected it was a hoax (in 1789 Freiherr Joseph Friedrich zu Racknitz built a duplicate Turk and wrote a book suggesting how it might work, published in Dresden) the details were slow to trickle out and sufficient mystique remained for the Turk to continue his tours. In 1854, 85 years after its construction, the Turk was destroyed in the great Philadelphia fire. At least 15 chess experts and masters had operated the Turk over its history. It prompted numerous books and pamphlets, none of which ever quite guessed its secret.

(There are also many Turk-related myths that refuse to die: Kempelen was not a Baron; he was not known as Farkas, or at least not until his biography was rewritten by Hungarian nationalists after his death; the Turk was never operated by a legless war veteran, and could accommodate a full-sized man; and it never played against Frederick the Great.)

Table of contents

1 Pictures
2 External links
3 Literature

Pictures

External links

detailed chronology of the Turk's career, including successor automatons

Literature

Karl Friedrich Hindenburg. Ueber den Schachspieler des Herrn von Kempelen. Nebst einer Abbildung und Beschreibung seiner Sprechmaschine. Leipzig, 1784.
Gerald M. Levitt. The Turk, chess automaton. McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers, 2000. ISBN 0786407786.
Joseph Friedrich Freyherr zu Racknitz. Ueber den Schachspieler des Herrn von Kempelen und dessen Nachbildung. Mit sieben Kupfertafeln. Leipzig und Dresden, 1789.
Tom Standage. The Turk: The Life and Times of the Famous Eighteenth-Century Chess-Playing Machine. Berkley Publishing Group, 2003. ISBN 0425190390.
Tom Standage. The Mechanical Turk: The True Story of the Chess Playing Machine That Fooled the World. Penguin Books, 2003. ISBN 014029919X.
Robert Willis. An attempt to analyse the automation chess player of Mr. Kempelen. J. Booth, London, 1821.
Karl Gottlieb von Windisch. Briefe ÃÂÃÂ¼ber den Schachspieler des Hrn. von Kempelen, nebst drey Kupferstichen die diese berÃÂÃÂ¼hmte Maschine vorstellen. Basel, Schweiz, 1783.
Der Schachautomat des Baron von Kempelen. Mit einem Nachwort von Marion Faber. Harenberg Kommunikation, Dortmund 1983. ISBN 3883793671.