Mechanical Turk
The Mechanical Turk, also known as the Automaton Chess Player or simply the Turk, was a chess-playing machine first displayed in 1770, which appeared to be able to play a strong game of chess autonomously, but whose pieces were in reality moved via levers and magnets by a chess master hidden in its lower cavity. The machine was toured and exhibited for 84 years as an automaton, and continued giving occasional exhibitions until 1854, when it was destroyed in a fire. In 1857, an article published by the owner's son provided the first full explanation of the mechanism, which had been widely suspected to be a hoax but never accurately described while the machine still existed.
Constructed by Wolfgang von Kempelen to impress Empress Maria Theresa, the Turk won most games, including those against statesmen such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin. It was purchased in 1804 by Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, who continued to exhibit it. Chess masters who operated it over this later period included Johann Allgaier, Boncourt, Aaron Alexandre, William Lewis, Jacques Mouret and William Schlumberger, but its operators during Kempelen's original tour remain unknown. The device could also perform the knight's tour, a puzzle that required the player to move a knight to visit every square of a chessboard exactly once.
Construction
A performance in 1769 by the French illusionist François Pelletier at the court of Empress Maria Theresa in Schönbrunn Palace prompted Wolfgang von Kempelen to promise to return to the Palace within a year with an invention that would surpass Pelletier's illusions.The result was the Automaton Chess Player, later known as the Turk, which Kempelen brought to a working state within 1769 and completed in early 1770. The machine consisted of a life-sized model of a human head and torso, with a black beard and grey eyes, and dressed in Ottoman robes and a turban – "the traditional costume", according to the technology writer Tom Standage, "of an oriental sorcerer". Its left arm held a long Ottoman smoking pipe when at rest, while its right lay on a cabinet that was "three feet and a half long, two feet deep, and two and a half feet high". Placed on the top of the cabinet was a chessboard. The front of the cabinet consisted of three doors, an opening and a drawer, which could be opened to reveal a red and white ivory chess set.
The interior had complications designed to mislead observers. When opened on the left, the front doors of the cabinet exposed gears and cogs resembling clockwork. The section was designed so that if the back doors of the cabinet were open at the same time one could see through the machine. The other side of the cabinet did not house machinery; instead it contained a red cushion and some removable parts, as well as brass structures. This too was designed to provide a clear line of vision through the machine. Underneath the robes of the Ottoman model, two other doors were hidden. These also exposed clockwork machinery and provided a similarly unobstructed view through the machine. The design allowed the presenter of the machine to open every available door to the public, to maintain the illusion of a purely clockwork mechanism.
Neither the clockwork visible on the left side of the machine nor the drawer that housed the chess set extended fully to the rear of the cabinet; they instead went only one-third of the way. A sliding seat was also installed, allowing the operator inside to move from place to place and thus evade observation as the presenter opened various doors. The sliding of the seat caused dummy machinery to slide into its place to further conceal the person inside the cabinet.
The chessboard on the top of the cabinet was thin enough to allow magnetic attraction. Each chess piece had a small, strong magnet attached to its base, and when placed on the board it would attract a magnet attached to a string under its place on the board. This allowed the operator inside the machine to see which pieces moved where on the chessboard. The underside of the chessboard was marked with squares numbered 1 to 64, helping the operator to see which places on the board were affected by a player's move. The internal magnets were positioned so that outside magnetic forces would not influence them, and Kempelen would often allow a large magnet to sit at the side of the board in an attempt to show that the machine was not influenced by magnetism.
As a further means of misdirection, the Turk came with a small wooden coffin-like box that the presenter would place on the top of the cabinet. Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, a later owner of the machine, did not use the box, but Kempelen often peered into it during play, suggesting that it controlled some aspect of the machine. Some believed the box to have supernatural power; Karl Gottlieb von Windisch wrote in his 1784 book Inanimate Reason that old lady, in particular, who had not forgotten the tales she had been told in her youth... went and hid herself in a window seat, as distant as she could from the evil spirit, which she firmly believed possessed the machine."
The interior contained a pegboard chessboard connected by something like a pantograph to the model's left arm. The metal pointer on the pantograph moved over the interior chessboard and would simultaneously move the arm of the Turk over the chessboard on the cabinet. The range of motion allowed the operator to move the Turk's arm up and down, while turning the lever would open and close the Turk's hand, allowing it to grasp the pieces on the board. The board and mechanism were visible to the operator by candlelight. Other parts of the machinery made a clockwork sound when the Turk made a move, further adding to the machinery illusion; and the Turk could make various facial expressions. A voice box was added following the Turk's acquisition by Mälzel, allowing the machine to say "Échec!" during games.
The operator inside the machine had tools to assist in communicating with the presenter. Two brass discs equipped with numbers were positioned opposite each other on the inside and outside of the cabinet. A rod rotated the discs to a desired number, which acted as a code between the two.
Exhibition
The Turk made its debut in 1770 at Schönbrunn Palace, about six months after Pelletier's act. Kempelen addressed the court, presenting what he had built, and began the demonstration of the machine and its parts. Kempelen began every showing of the Turk by opening the doors and drawers of the cabinet, allowing members of the audience to inspect the machine. He would then announce that the machine was ready for a challenger.Kempelen insisted that the Turk would use the white pieces and have the first move. Between moves, the Turk kept its left arm on the cushion. It could nod twice if it threatened its opponent's queen and three times upon placing the king in check. If an opponent made an illegal move, the Turk would shake its head, move the piece back and make its own move, thus forcing a forfeit of its opponent's move. Louis Dutens, a traveller who observed a showing of the Turk, "attempted to practice a small deception, by giving the Queen the move of a Knight, but my mechanic opponent was not to be so imposed on; he took up my Queen and replaced her in the square she had been removed from". Kempelen made it a point to traverse the room during the match, and invited observers to bring magnets and iron bars to the cabinet to test whether the machine operated via a lodestone.
The first person to play against the Turk was Ludwig von Cobenzl, an Austrian courtier at the palace. Along with other challengers that day, he was quickly defeated, with observers of the match stating that the machine played aggressively and typically beat its opponents within thirty minutes.
Another part of the machine's exhibition was the completion of the knight's tour, a famed puzzle requiring the player to move a knight around a chessboard, visiting each square once along the way. While most experienced chess players of the time still struggled with this, the Turk could complete the tour without any difficulty from any starting point thanks to a pegboard marked with a closed-loop solution. Furthermore, the Turk could converse with spectators using a letterboard. The operator during the period when Kempelen presented the machine at Schönbrunn Palace, whose identity is unknown, was able to do this in English, French and German. Carl Friedrich Hindenburg, a mathematician, kept a record of the conversations during the Turk's time in Leipzig and published it in 1784. Topics of questions put to and answered by the Turk included its age, marital status and secret workings.
European tour
Following word of its debut, interest in the machine grew across Europe. However, Kempelen avoided exhibiting the Turk, often lying about its repair status to prospective challengers. Von Windisch wrote that Kempelen "refused to gratify his friends, and many curious people of different countries, who wished to see this boasted machine, under a pretence that it had received damage by being removed from place to place". In the decade following its debut at Schönbrunn Palace, the Turk only played one opponent, Robert Murray Keith, a Scottish diplomat, and Kempelen went as far as dismantling the Turk entirely following the pair of games. He was quoted dismissing the invention as a mere trifle, as he was not pleased with its popularity and preferred to continue work on machines that replicated human speech.In 1781, Kempelen was ordered by Emperor Joseph II to reconstruct the Turk and deliver it to Vienna for a state visit from Grand Duke Paul of Russia and his wife. The appearance was so successful that the Grand Duke suggested a tour of Europe for the Turk, a request to which Kempelen reluctantly agreed.
The Turk began its European tour in April 1783, in France. A stop at Versailles beginning on 17 April preceded an exhibition in Paris, where it lost a match to the Duke of Bouillon. Upon arrival in Paris in May, it was displayed to the public and played a variety of opponents, including a lawyer named Mr Bernard, one of five French players regarded as of second rank. Demands increased for a match with François-André Danican Philidor, who with Legall de Kermeur was considered the best chess player of his time. Moving to the Café de la Régence, the machine played many of the most skilled players, often losing, until securing a match with Philidor at the Académie des Sciences. While Philidor won his match with the Turk, Philidor's son noted that his father called it "his most fatiguing game of chess ever". The Turk's final game in Paris was against Benjamin Franklin, then the American ambassador to France. Franklin reportedly enjoyed the game with the Turk and remained interested in the machine for the rest of his life, keeping a copy of Philip Thicknesse's book The Speaking Figure and the Automaton Chess Player, Exposed and Detected in his personal library.
Following his tour of Paris, Kempelen moved the Turk to London, where it was exhibited daily for five shillings. Thicknesse was a sceptic and sought out the Turk in an attempt to expose its inner workings. While he respected Kempelen as "a very ingenious man", he asserted that the Turk was an elaborate hoax with a small child inside the machine, describing the machine as "a complicated piece of clockwork... which is nothing more, than one, of many other ingenious devices, to misguide and delude the observers". In a popular book first published in 1784, and largely devoted to the tricks of Joseph Pinetti, Henri Decremps has "Van Estin" attribute the operation of "an automaton chess player, similar to the one shewn at Paris and Vienna, by a German mechanick" to "a dwarf, a famous chess player, who was hidden in the commode".
After a year in London, Kempelen and the Turk travelled to Leipzig, stopping in various European cities along the way. From Leipzig, they went to Dresden, where Joseph Friedrich Freiherr von Racknitz viewed the machine and published his findings with illustrations showing how he believed it operated. They then moved to Amsterdam, after which Kempelen is said to have accepted an invitation to the Sanssouci palace in Potsdam. Frederick is said to have enjoyed the Turk so much that he paid a large sum to Kempelen in exchange for its secrets. Frederick never divulged these but was reportedly disappointed to learn how the machine worked. However, this story is apocryphal: there is no evidence of the Turk's encounter with Frederick, the first mention of which comes in the early 19th century, by which time the Turk was incorrectly said to have played against George III of Great Britain. It seems most likely that the machine stayed dormant at Schönbrunn Palace for over two decades, although Kempelen attempted unsuccessfully to sell it in the final years before his death at 70 on 26 March 1804.