The Mechanical Turk; The Full Scoop

Hello everyone! I hope you enjoy!

Chess players in the 1700s favored attacking brilliancies over slow positional play. In this time, chess was considered a royal passion, often played in noble courts and salons. It was named the "King's Game" for its relation to leadership and intellect. 

Around the 1770s, there was a real life "chess bot" named the Mechanical Turk. People were amazed on how it was so good and yet, "not human". But, turns out it was all a scam and they just plonked some of the great chess masters of that era, such as:

• Johann Baptist Allgaier – One of the earliest known operators, a strong Austrian player and author of a chess manual.

• William Schlumberger – A French master who operated the Turk during its American tour under Johann Nepomuk Mälzel.

• Jacques Mouret – A French player who later revealed the secret of the Turk to the press.

• Karel Nepomuk Mälzel – Not a player himself, but the showman who acquired and toured the Turk after Kempelen’s death.

One of the many feats of this "automation" was completing the "Knights Tour", a difficult chess puzzle that required the knight to move to every square on the board, without touching any square twice.

The Mechanical Turk made its debut in 1770 at Schonbrunn Palace. This "automation" went touring around Europe and America for nearly 8 and a half decades, playing against some of the most known names in history, such as Benjamin Franklin. 

Rumor has it that the Mechanical Turk had a very aggressive and tactical form of play, often destroying people within 30 minutes. 

People were absolutely stunned of how good he was playing for a "non-human". 

But later it was revealed by famous American Writer Edgar Allen Poe that the reality was that the mechanical dummy was not an automation but rather a puppet controlled by someone in the case. 

A long time later, the "Mechanical Turk" was put on display in the Chinese Museum of Charles Willson Peale. It lay there mostly forgotten until the building set on fire, and since then many replicas have been made.

Thank you for reading!

Love, JETINATE