July 20 is International Chess Day. On this day, we talk about the first chess machine, the secrets of which are not fully disclosed today.
The very first and most famous chess machine in history was made in the form of a huge doll sitting in front of a chessboard in a Turkish caftan, with a turban on his head and a long smoking pipe in his hand. In the XVIII-XIX centuries, this machine made several triumphal tours in Europe and America, beating the then chess masters, as well as, as legend has it, many crowned persons, including Catherine the Second and Napoleon.
What is true in these legends and what is fiction? This is described by Tom Standage’s book "Turk. The history of the first chess machine and its adventurous journey around the world."
No fraud?
In the fall of 1769, the Viennese aristocrat Wolfgang von Kempelen, who was considered the chief specialist in mechanics at the court of Maria Theresa, was instructed to explain the secrets of the tricks that the visiting empress showed to the visiting French illusionist. Von Kempelen decided to prove that manual dexterity is not necessary to demonstrate impressive tricks: it is enough to know the laws of physics only. So the idea of creating a chess machine arose.
Empress Maria Theresa, who was a very enlightened person (she readily read books on natural sciences, struggled with superstitions and introduced, for example, mass vaccinations against smallpox), allocated a lot of money to the inventor and freed him from all court duties for six months. And in 1770 in Vienna, in the presence of Maria Theresa, the first presentation of the “chess Turk” took place. A wooden mannequin the size of a man was dressed in a caftan trimmed with fur, and wide harem pants. Everything oriental, with its combination of exoticism, luxury and elegance, was then in fashion, so it was not by chance that von Kempelen's choice fell on the Turk.
The mannequin sat at a wooden table closed on all sides, on which a chessboard was fixed. The table looked more like a large chest or chest of drawers with opening and sliding drawers. He stood on four brass casters, which allowed von Kempelen to import and take it, as well as rotate it so that viewers could inspect the machine from all sides.
Turk on a spring
The demonstration, the character of which has not practically changed for eight decades, was as follows: von Kempelen (and later his successor) first opened one casement chest. Viewers saw some wheels, gears, pendulums, levers (mechanical insides of the machine). The same was hiding behind another door. The demonstrator opened the doors on the back of the chest of drawers so that everyone could see that no one was hidden inside.
Then the drawers opened at the bottom of the chest of drawers, von Kempelen took out ivory chess pieces from them, arranged them, invited him out of the hall to fight with a machine gun, and the match began. Throughout the game, the demonstrator stood aside, only occasionally twisting something in the machine. The Turk completely independently, "thinking over" the next move, raised his wooden hand and moved this or that figure.
At the highest command, von Kempelen went on a European tour. Moreover, the inventor himself would prefer to stay at home: he was then working on a typewriter for the blind and designed an apparatus that imitates a human voice, and he has already cooled down to his “chess Turk”. But I had to go. And the glory of the inventor Wolfgang von Kempelen owes it to the Turk.
And yet: what was the secret? Someone thought that von Kempelen uses a very strong magnet. However, a magnet is a rather primitive tool. In addition, the demonstrator approached the machine only from time to time, and not after each move of the enemy.
There was an assumption that von Kempelen uses the thinnest ropes or metal cables that are not visible even from a short distance and with their help moves the hand and head of the Turk (the head also moved from time to time). This hypothesis was quickly rejected. Von Kempelen walked freely around the stage, bypassing the “Turk” both from behind and from the front, that is, ropes or metal cables, if they existed, would have been confused long ago.
Legless officer Vorovsky
Most of those who did not believe in miracles agreed that in the dresser, behind which the mannequin sits, or inside it, a person is hiding - a child or a dwarf. He actually plays chess. One of the most desperate whistleblowers wanted to sprinkle snuff before the demonstration on stage so that the person hiding in the box would begin to sneeze, but that did not work.
Obviously, in order to drown out suspicious sounds that could be heard from inside the machine, von Kempelen walked around the stage during the game, loudly announced moves, started the spring with noise ... Most likely, the hypothesis that the chess player was really hiding inside the drawer, was true. But who exactly was hiding?
According to the most beautiful version, a certain Vorovsky was hiding inside the “Turk” - a strong chess player and former Polish officer, whom von Kempelen had once secretly taken out of the Russian Empire. Thieves participated in the uprising, brutally crushed by the autocracy, and in one of the battles lost both legs. Kempelen seems to have met him in Petersburg.
This story, alas, is not confirmed by facts. Nevertheless, in the British Encyclopedia of the beginning of the twentieth century, as a chess player who controlled the “Turk” from the inside, it was Vorovsky who was mentioned. In addition, several plays and even two novels have been written on this plot! In the finals of one of them (he was called the “Chess Player” and was released in 1926 in Paris), Catherine the Second, furious with her loss, orders the machine gun to be shot. Under the hail of bullets, the young hero Vorovsky, hiding inside, also dies. Here is such an eerie plot ...
Fire destroys traces
No less legends have developed about the second, so to speak, life of a chess machine. After the death of von Kempelen, he passed into the hands of Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, an equally talented mechanic and demonstrator. According to the chronicles, Melzel brought the Turk to Napoleon. Various — partly very colorful — descriptions of this match have survived, and some chess books even publish games played by Napoleon and the machine gun. But, most likely, this is just a legend.
And it arose, perhaps because the “Turk” bought Napoleon's stepson from Meltzel. Melzel himself was engaged in other projects: the diorama of the Moscow fire of 1812, the creation of a jukebox, which he called the "orchestra", and the improvement of the metronome (invented, by the way, not by Melzel, as is usually believed, but by another inventor).
True, after the defeat of Napoleon, Melzel again bought a chess machine, but the golden times have already passed. People have become less superstitious and less naive. The suspicion that a person is hiding inside the car has grown into confidence. And at a demonstration of a chess machine, less and less people came. Melzel went into debt and in 1838 sold the "Turk" for $ 400. The machine was exhibited at the Museum of Curiosities in Philadelphia. In July 1854, a fire broke out on the street where the museum was located, and a wooden "Turk" burned out along with other exhibits. Usually in such cases they add: "And he took his secret with him forever" ...
