What was the world’s first computer? Was it the ENIAC or the Commodore 64?
Or was it a chess
playing robot made in the 18th century? No it it wasn’t but it’s interesting so I’m going to talk about
it anyway and I needed a good lead in.
In 1770 Wolfgang von Kempelen revealed to the word his masterpiece. He had invented a robot
capable of not only acting on it’s own initiative but also of playing chess. Named “the Turk” for the
robot’s appearance it was originally created to impress the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa but it
quickly because famous.
The Turk would be used with almost all it’s internal mechanisms exposed for anyone around to see.
Cogs would turn, chains would move and all sorts of gizmo’s would do all sorts of things to impress
people but none of them actually did anything, they were all for show. It could move it’s eyes
around as if looking at the board, shake it’s head yes or nor, tap it’s fingers and move it’s own
pieces.
The Turk would not share a board instead two identical boards would be set up and each player
would move his own pieces with an intermediary making the opponents moves. The Tuk would
only ever move it’s left arm but could tap it’s right hand impatiently.
The Turk could not only play chess but it could react to an opponents moves, it could invent entirely
new strategies, it could even speak the word “Check” in French and it even beat one of the most
famous chess players of the era, Benjamin Franklin. It even found a unique solution to “The
Knight’s Tour” a Chess puzzle where a Knight must visit each space on the board one but can never
land in the same square twice.
I would argue the most famous man The Turk ever beat, and the man who actually lead me to
discover this invention, was Napoleon Bonaparte himself in 1809 where, in true Napoleon style he
tried to cheat.
How was this possible? Was it Aliens? 18th Century Computers or even a time travelling AI?
Well those are all good possibilities but there’s an even better one. It wasn’t possible. It was all a lie.
The Turk was actually just a complex ruse that hid a chess master in it’s cabinet who would control
“The Turk” via mechanisms. Different men played as “The Turk” and all kept quiet about what they
had done. These weren’t just people who happened to be alright at chess and needed some cash,
Chess Masters like John Baptist Allgaier and William Schlumberger were the Turk at one point or
another.
So how did it really work? Well people at the time had all sorts of ideas. Some though that a Dwarf
was concealed in the box, some thought it was magnets, some believed it was real, some thought a
child was in the machine, some thought it was all scripted and the challengers were all in on the
scam and the Turk was somehow per-programmed, Some thought it was magic, some people
thought it was a monkey and some people came very close to the real thing but as far as a I know no
one ever fully figured it out.
So how did it work?
Well as we know a human would be hidden in the Turk and to try and throw people off the scent
each of the front doors would be opened one by one before the Turk played and all that people
could see were clockwork mechanisms moving very loudly.
As this was happening the controller would be moving within the cabinet positioning himself so he
couldn’t be seen from the outside.
Remember how before I said the Turk could only use it’s left arm? Well that’s because of the
positioning of the chess master inside. The Chess master sat with his right side hard up against the
edge of the cabinet and so couldn’t use his right arm at all. Instead a device was connected to the
chess masters left arm that more or less mimicked his actions on the Turk. The arm was moved with
a type of Pantograph which allowed the Turk to mimic and magnify the moves of the chess master
on his small board on it’s larger board.
Now we get to the really clever part. How was the Chess amster meant to see where the pieces
were? Did they have idetic memories and memorise the entire game piece by piece? Did they have
a crude map of some kind that they constantly erased and redrew? No instead the theory of the
pieces being magnetic was partially true. Small levers and magnets were fitted into the underside of
each of the Turk's chess pieces so when it picked up a piece that pices magnet would release the
lever and activate the lever of the square to which it moved. Then the chess master would replicate
the move on their small chess board before putting their arm into the Pantograph and make their
own move.
The Turk could also pick up and put down chess pieces so how was this possible? In the arm
mechanism there was a small rod that could be turned. When it was turned the fingers of the Turk
would either contract or open up allowing it to either pick up or put down a piece.
The eye rolling, head shaking, hand tapping and any other small movements of the Turk were done
with the relevant mechanisms that the operator could use at any time.
SO that’s the Famous Turk and although the orignal was sadly destroyed in a fire there are many
reproductions available to view around the world. This might not have been a real machine but it
significantly boosted the popularity of Chess inn Europe and North America and forever planted the
seed of a Chess playing automaton in the minds of those people to the degree that even more than
two centuries after it’s creation people were still fascinated by man vs Machine chess.
It wouldn’t be until 1996 that a non-human would ever beat a human in a game of chess when
IBM’s Deep Blue beat Chess Master Garry Kasparov.
https://www.eapoe.org/works/essays/maelzel.htm
https://www.americanheritage.com/echec
