Taking A Look At The Turk

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The idea of machines surpassing their creators and achieving intelligence has intrigued humans for countless years, from tales of automatons over the centuries, to modern Hollywood monsters like terminators and the matrix. People find the idea that we can be outwitted and outsmarted by something we created fascinating and terrifying. The first machine that brought this idea in humanities mind was The Turk, a fake chess playing automaton.
The Turk was constructed in the late 18th century by Wolfgang von Kempelen, a Slovakian engineer and civil administrator. He worked on numerous projects such as developing steam pumps, mining technology and attempting to reproduce the human voice mechanically. In the late 18th century it was unveiled for the …show more content…

A life size replica of a Turkish man dressed in traditional garb holding a pile that is attached to a large cabinet that has a chess board on top of it. The cabinet is 110cm by 60cm and 75 cm tall. Hidden behind the first of the three doors on the cabinet is the real intricacy of The Turk. When the first door is opened, one sees “wheels, pinions, levers, and other machinery” (Poe, 1836) that one can barely see through. The owner of The Turk, would then walk to the other side of The Turk with a candle and shine the light through so the audience could see that there was no foul play involved and no space for a human inside. Behind the other two doors are “metal wheels, cylinders and things that looked like quadrants” (Teresi, …show more content…

Nevertheless, it did inspire other fake chess playing machines such as Ajeeb or “the Egyptian” which played against figures like Roosevelt and Houdini. On the other hand there was mephisto, which unlike the others, was operated by remote control. (Harding, 2012). Finally, there is El Ajedrecista the first true chess playing automaton that played without any human guidance. However, it only played an endgame with three chess

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