The Turk: The Life and Times of the Famous 19th Century Chess-Playing Machine

This is a wonderful history of a chess playing automaton. The author weaves into the history the mechanical progress of the times as well as the public's yearning to view automatons and to be bamboozled. The "Turk" had an interesting history unto itself which included meeting many important world figures during its long career, including Twain and Napoleon.In addition to giving the reader what would be only a fairly interesting history, the author did not disclose how the Turk worked until the very end. He shared the many theories posed and the debunking of them. His self-control in holding back the secret kept reading the book as if it were an Ellery Queen novel rather than a piece of non-fiction.The finishing touch was a chapter on a real chess-playing machine, Big Blue and its human opponent.This was an interesting and thoroughly entertaining read.

I am geeky enough to find a famous automaton inherently interesting, especially one that seemed to be intelligent, but "The Turk" tickled my curiosity on whole different level. Tom Standage has managed to find one of those threads of history that connects a hundred interesting stories. What other object could connect Benjamin Franklin to P.T. Barnum, not to mention Napoleon , Charles Babbage, and Edgar Allan Poe? This is fine tale, full of strange characters, weird devices, and a dose of human folly , all carried forward by a strong undercurrent of mystery.

Thorough, well-written exposition on history's famous and fascinating mechanical puzzle. If you're at all interested in chess, automata, computer intelligence (or even stage magic), this book's for you.

This is a delightful book that takes one cultural artifact (a mechanical chess playing machine that looks like a human being and is dressed in oriental opulence, "The Turk") and follows its entire life, from its conceptualization and manufacture to its final demise in a fire in Philadelphia. The period of the Turk's life lasted 85 years, and the people who somehow met and interacted with it were such luminaries Napoleon, and Charles Babbage (inventor of the first computer, sort of), and P. T. Barnum. Edgar Allan Poe started an entire genre (the short detective story) by writing "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," in part inspired by the mental exercise of trying to figure out how The Turk worked. Silas Wier Mitchell, the famous American Civil War physician and neurologist, actually owned The Turk before donating it to the Chinese museum in which it finally perished. Literally hundreds of Europe's intellectuals, and crowned heads, and glitterati of one sort or another played chess against the famous automaton, and usually (but not always) lost the game. And nobody except the operators knew the secret of the machine.The Turk was the work of Wolfgang Kempelen, an engineer and an aid to the Austro-Hungarian Empress Maria Theresa, who called him to court so that he could explain to her the magic and the related magnetic games that were being demonstrated by a Frenchman by the name of Pelletier in the various courts of Europe. Maria Theresa, being of a scientific mind herself, wanted a respected official to uncover the trickery (if any) involved in Pelletier's performance. Mr. Kempelen explained each act as it was being performed, and was so unimpressed by the whole show that he boasted that if he had six months of free time he would be able to construct a really impressive automaton that would outclass anything then being shown in Europe. Maria Therese took him up on the challenge, and ordered him to go home, build his marvel in six months, and forget his duties to the state during that period.Six months passed and in the Spring of 1770 Mr. Kempelen arrived in court with the Turk in tow. It was a life-size wood carving of a man wearing Turkish garb, seated at a table, with only one movable arm (the left)with dexterous fingers, and with a fixed gaze that stared down at a chess board. On the night of the first demonstration, Kempelen wheeled the figure before the audience, opened the various doors of the table, showing an impressive set of elaborate and mysterious clockwork and allowing the audience to look through the various openings, shining a candle for behind, so that they would see they were either empty or full of wheels and cogs, but free of any human being. When he convinced everyone that there was nothing hiding inside the machine, Kempelen invited one of the courtiers to sit at the table and play against the Turk. He used a large key to wind it up, and when he released a lever the Turk moved his head as if scanning the board, and suddenly reache

I forget when or where but, many years ago, I first learned about a chess-playing automaton in the 19th century. In Standage's just published book, I have just learned "the rest of the story." The automaton (named "The Turk") attracted a great deal of attention and generated a great deal of controversy. Benjamin Franklin apparently played a game or two against it. In fact, "The Turk" is reputed to have defeated most of Europe's chess masters during a period which extends from 1770 until 1855. It attracted the attention of countless celebrities (e.g. Napoleon Bonaparte, Edgar Allan Poe, Catherine the Great, and Charles Babbage) and indeed, "The Turk" itself became a celebrity as did its inventor, Wolfgang von Kempelen. Was it truly a technological marvel, not only able to to move chess pieces but to formulate and then follow strategies which prevailed against most of the most skilled players? Or was it a hoax? It would be a disservice both to Standage and to his reader to say much more about this book, except that it is exceptionally well-written and combines the best features of a crackerjack detective story with the skills required of a world-class cultural anthropologist. Standage is a master storyteller; he tells the story of "The Turk" within the context of the Age of Victoria when the Industrial Revolution was well-underway and indeed thriving. Great stuff!