The Turk is a world famous hoax which purported to be a chess-playing machine. Constructed and unveiled in 1770 by the Hungarian baron Wolfgang von Kempelen (1734-1804), the mechanism appeared to be able to play a strong game of chess against a human opponent, as well as perform the knight's tour, a puzzle which requires the player to move a knight to occupy every square of a chess board once and only once.

Erroneously considered an automaton, The Turk was instead built as a mechanical illusion that allowed a chess master of any size to hide inside and operate the machine as the director, consequently winning most of the games it played. The apparatus toured Europe and the United States of America for over 80 years until its destruction in 1854, playing and defeating many challengers, as well as world leaders such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin.

Kempelen was inspired to build the Turk following his attendance at the court of Maria Theresa of Austria at Schönbrunn Palace, where François Pelletier was performing an illusion act. An exchange following the performance resulted in Kempelen promising to return to the Palace with an invention that would top the performance.^[1]

The result of the challenge was The Automaton-Chess Player,^[2] known in modern times as the Turk. The machine consisted of a human-sized model with a black beard and grey eyes^[3] dressed in Turkish robes and a turban, "the traditional costume," according to journalist and author Tom Standage, "of an oriental sorcerer." The model had a left arm which held a long Turkish smoking pipe while at rest, and a right arm that laid on the top of a large cabinet^[4] which measured approximately 3.5 feet long, 2 feet wide, and 2.5 feet high. Placed on the top of the cabinet was a chess board, which measured 1.5 feet square.^[1] The front of the cabinet consisted of three doors, an aperture and a drawer which could be opened to reveal a red and white ivory chess set.^[4]

The interior of the machine was very complicated. When opened on the left, the front doors of the cabinet exposed a number of gears and cogs similar to clockwork. The section was designed so that, if the back doors of the cabinet were open at the same time, a person could see through the machine. The other side of the cabinet that did not house the machinery instead contained a red cushion and some removable parts, as well as built-in brass structures. This area was also designed to expose a clear line of vision through the machine. Underneath the Turkish model, two other doors were hidden underneath the figure's robes. These doors also exposed clockwork machinery and provided a similar ability to see through the machine. The design allowed the presenter of the machine to open every available door to the public to maintain the illusion.^[4]

The design of the Turk was crafted to mislead those who observed it.^[1] The clockwork which was visible in the left side of the machine, as well as the drawer which housed the chess set, did not extend fully to the rear of the cabinet, but only one third of the way. A sliding seat was also installed, allowing for the director inside to slide from place to place as the presenter opened various doors. The sliding of the seat caused dummy machinery to slide into its place to further disguise the person inside the cabinet.^[4]

The chess board on the top of the cabinet was thin enough to allow for a magnetic contraption. The chess set had small, strong magnets attached to the bottom of the pieces, and when they were placed on the board, the pieces would attract a magnet attached to a string under its specific placement on the board. This allowed the director inside the machine to see which pieces moved to which spot on the chess board.^[4] The bottom of the chessboard had corresponding numbers, 1-64, allowing the director to see which places on the board were affected a player's moves.^[5] The magnets were also positioned in a way that outside magnets did not influence them, as Kempelen would often allow a large magnet to sit at the side of the board in an attempt to show that the machine was not influenced by magnetism.^[6]

As a further form of misdirection, the Turk came with a small wooden coffin-like box that the presenter would place on the top of the cabinet.^[1] While Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, a later owner of the machine, did not use the box,^[7] Kempelen often peered into the box during play, suggesting that the box controlled some aspect of the machine.^[1] The box was believed by some to have supernatural power, with Karl Gottlieb von Windisch writing in his 1784 book Briefe über den Schachspieler von Kempelen nebst drey Kupferstichen die diese berühmte Maschine vorstellen, translated as Inanimate Reason; or a Circumstantial Account of That Astonishing Piece of Mechanism, M. de Kempelen's Chess-Player; Now Exhibiting at No. 9 Savile-Row, Burlington Gardens,^[7] that "[o]ne old lady, in particular, who had not forgotten the tales she had been told in her youth...went and hid herself in a window seat, as distant as she could from the evil spirit, which she firmly believed possessed the machine."^[8]

The interior also contained a pegboard chess board connected to a pantograph-style series of levers which controlled the model's left arm. The metal pointer on the pantograph moved over the interior chess board, and would move the arm of the Turk over the chess board on the cabinet simultaneously. The range of motion allowed the director to move the Turk's arm up and down, and turning the lever would open and close the Turk's hand, allowing it to grasp the pieces on the board. Another part of the machinery allowed for a clockwork-type sound to be played when the Turk made a move, further adding to the machinery illusion,^[4][6] and other parts allowed for the Turk to make various facial expressions.^[9] The machine was later capable of activating a voice box to say "echec!" (French for "check") during matches following the Turk's acquisition by Mälzel.^[2]

Operators inside the machine also had tools to assist in communicating with the presenter outside. Two brass discs were positioned opposite each other on the inside and outside of the cabinet, and were equipped with numbers. A rod could rotate the disks to the desired number, which could act as a code between the two.^[4]

The Turk received its debut in 1770 at Schönbrunn Palace, approximately six months after Pelletier's act. Kempelen addressed the court, presenting what he had built, and began the demonstration of the machine and its parts. With every showing of the Turk, the act would begin with Kempelen opening the doors and drawers of the cabinet, allowing for the inspection of the machine by members of the audience. Following the display, Kempelen announced that the machine was ready for a challenger.^[4]

Kempelen would inform the player that the Turk would use the white pieces and have the first move. Between moves, the Turk kept its left arm on the cushion. During play, if the Turk threatened its opponent's queen, it was able to nod twice, and nod three times upon placing the king in check. If an opponent was to make an illegal move, the Turk would shake its head, move the piece back, and then make its own move, thus forcing a forfeit of its opponent's move.^[4] Louis Dutens, a traveler in Europe who observed a showing of the Turk, attempted to trick the machine "by giving the Queen the move of a Knight, but my mechanic opponent was not to be so imposed upon; he took up my Queen and replaced her in the square from which I had moved her."^[10] Kempelen would make it a point to traverse the room during the match, and invited observers to bring magnets, irons, and lodestones to the cabinet to test whether the machine was run by a form of magnetization or weights. The first person to play the Turk was Count Cobenzl, a courtier at the palace. He, along with other challengers that day, was quickly defeated, with observers of the match stating that the machine played aggressively, and typically beat its opponents within thirty minutes.^[4]

Another part of the machine's exhibition was the completion of the knight's tour, a famed chess puzzle. The puzzle required the player to move a knight around a chess board, touching each square once along the way. While most experienced chess players of the time still struggled with the puzzle, the Turk was capable of completing the tour without any difficulty from any starting point via a pegboard used by the director with the unique mapping of the puzzle laid out.^[4]

The Turk also had the ability, using a letter board, to converse with spectators. The director, whose identity during Kempelen's time presenting the machine at Schönbrunn Palace is unknown,^[4] was able to converse in English, French, and German. Carl Friedrich Hindenburg, a university mathematician, kept a record of the conversations during the Turk's time in Leipzig and published it as Ueber den Schachspieler des Herrn von Kempelen, nebst einer Abbildung und Beschreibung seiner Sprachmachine, or About the Chessplayer of Mr. von Kempelen and an Imitation of It, in 1789. Questions asked and answered by the Turk included its age, marital status, and questions about the machine's secrets.^[7]

Following word of its debut, interest in the machine grew across Europe. Kempelen was more interested in his other projects, however, and avoided exhibiting the Turk, often lying to prospective challengers about the machine's repair status. Von Windisch wrote at one point that Kempelen "refused the entreaties of his friends, and a crowd of curious persons from all countries, the satisfaction of seeing this far-famed machine."^[4] In the decade following its debut at the Palace, the Turk only played one opponent, Sir Robert Murray Keith, a Scottish noble, and Kempelen went as far as dismantling the Turk entirely following the match.^[4] Kempelen was quoted as referring to the invention as "mere bagatelle," as he was not pleased with his invention's popularity and would rather continue work on steam engines and attempts to create machines that replicated human speech.^[1]

In 1781, Kempelen was ordered by Joseph II to reconstruct the Turk and deliver it to Vienna, Austria, for a state visit from Grand Duke Paul Alexandrovich of Russia and his wife. The appearance was successful enough that Grand Duke Paul suggested a tour of Europe for the Turk, a request that Kempelen reluctantly agreed to.^[4]

The Turk began its European tour in 1783, beginning with an appearance in France in April. A stop at Versailles preceded an exhibition in Paris, where the Turk lost a match to the duc de Bouillon. Upon arrival in Paris in May of 1793, it was displayed to the public and played a variety of opponents, including a lawyer named Mr. Bernard who was a second rank in chess ability.^[4] Following the sessions at Versailles, demand for a match with François-André Danican Philidor, the best chess player of his time. Moving to the Café de la Régence, the machine played many of the most skilled players of the time, often losing, until securing a match with Philidor at the Académie des Sciences. While Philidor won his match with the Turk, Philidor's son noted that his father called it "his most fatiguing game of chess ever!"^[7] The Turk's final game in Paris was against Benjamin Franklin, who was serving as ambassador to France for the United States at the time. Franklin reportedly enjoyed the game with the Turk and kept an interest in the machine through the rest of his life, keeping a copy of Philip Thicknesse's book The Speaking Figure and the Automaton Chess Player, Exposed and Detected in his personal library.^[7]

Following his tour of Paris, Kempelen moved the Turk to London, where it was exhibited daily for 5 shillings. Thicknesse, known in his time as a noted skeptic, sought out the Turk in an attempt to debunk the inner workings of the machine.^[7] While he respected Kempelen as "a very ingenius man",^[1] in Thicknesse's book, he asserted that the Turk was an elaborate hoax with a small child inside the machine, describing the machine as "a complicated piece of clockwork...which is nothing more, than one, of many other ingenious devices, to misguide and delude the observers."^[11]

After a year in London, Kempelen and the Turk traveled to Leipzig, making stops in various European cities along the way. From Leipzig, it stopped in Dresden, where Joseph Friedrich Freiherr zu Racknitz viewed the Turk and published his findings in Ueber den Schachspieler des Herrn von Kempelen, nebst einer Abbildung und Beschreibung seiner Sprachmachine, along with some illustrations as to his beliefs regarding the operation of the machine. The machine then moved to Amsterdam, accepting an invitation to the palace of Frederick the Great, King of Prussia at Sanssouci in Potsdam, Germany. Frederick enjoyed the Turk so much that he paid a large sum of money to Kempelen in exchange for the Turk's secrets. While Frederick never gave the secret away, he was reportedly disappointed to learn how the machine worked.^[7]

The Turk's final stop was back where the machine began, at Schönbrunn Palace. The machine would stay dormant for over two decades, although Kempelen unsuccessfully attempted to sell the Turk in his final years. Kempelen would pass away at age 70 on 26 March 1804.^[7]

Following the death of Kempelen, the Turk continued to lie dormant. Kempelen's son, sometime before 1808, decided to attempt to sell the machine to Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, a Bavarian musician with an interest in various machines and devices. Mälzel, who's successes included patenting a form of metronome, had attempted to purchase the Turk once before, prior to Wolfgang von Kempelen's death. The original deal had failed due to Wolfgang von Kempelen's asking price of 20,000 francs, but Kempelen's son ended up selling the machine to Mälzel for 10,000 francs, half the original cost.^[7]

Mälzel, upon acquiring the Turk, first had to learn the secrets of the machine as well as make some repairs to get it back into working order. According to Mälzel, his goal was to make explaining the Turk a greater challenge, as well as make various changes to the machine. While the completion of all these goals took ten years to complete, the Turk still made some appearances, most notably with Napoleon Bonaparte.^[7]

In 1809, Napoleon Bonaparte arrived at Schönbrunn Palace to play the Turk. Mälzel, according to an eyewitness report, took responsibility for the construction of the machine while preparing the game, and the Turk saluted Bonaparte prior to the start of the match. The details of the match have been published in many accounts over the years, many of which contradict each other.^[4] According to Bradley Ewart in his book Chess: Man vs. Machine, it is believed that the Turk sat at its cabinet, and Bonaparte separate from the machine at a chess table in a roped off area that he was not allowed to cross into. Mälzel would cross back and forth to make each players moves, allowing a clear view for spectators. Bonaparte, in a surprise move, took the first turn instead of the typical first move of the Turk, but Mälzel allowed the game to continue. Shortly thereafter, Bonaparte attempted an illegal move. The Turk, upon noticing the move, returned the piece to its original spot and continued the game. Bonaparte attempted the illegal move a second time, and the Turk responded by removing the piece from the board entirely and taking its turn. Bonaparte then attempted the move a third time, the Turk responding with a sweep of the arm, knocking all the pieces off the board. Bonaparte was reportedly amused, and then played a real game with the machine, completing nineteen moves before tipping over his king in surrender.^[12] Alternate versions of the story include Bonaparte being unhappy about losing to the machine, and Bonaparte playing the machine at a later time, playing one match with a magnet on the board and another with a shawl around the head and body of the Turk figure to obscure its vision.^[7]

In 1811, Mälzel brought the Turk to Milan in Italy for a performance with Eugène de Beauharnais, the Prince de Venise. Beauharnais enjoyed the machine so much that he made an offer to purchase it from Mälzel. After some serious bargaining, Beauharnais acquired the Turk from Mälzel for a sum of 30,000 francs, three times the price that Mälzel paid for the machine, and Beauharnais kept the machine for four years. In 1815, Mälzel returned to Beauharnais and attempted to buy the Turk back, eventually working out an agreement where Mälzel would pay Beauharnais 30,000 francs out of profits of future exhibitions in Europe while not taking the Turk off the continent.^[7]

Following the repurchase, Mälzel brought the Turk back to Paris, where he made acquaintances of many of the leading chess players at Café de la Régence. Mälzel stayed with the machine in France until 1818, where he moved to London and held a number of performances with the Turk as well as many of his other machines. In London, Mälzel and his act received a large amount of press, and he continued improving the machine,^[7] ultimately installing a voice box so the machine could say "echec!" when placing a player in check.^[4]

In 1819, Mälzel brought the Turk on a tour of the entire United Kingdom, along with new developments in the act, allowing the opponent of the Turk the first move as well as eliminating the king's bishop's pawn from the Turk's pieces. This pawn handicap created further interest in the Turk, and spawned a book by W. J. Hunneman chronicling the matches played with this handicap, Chess. A Selection of Fifty Games, from Those Played by the Automaton Chess-Player, During Its Exhibition in London, in 1820. The Turk, with the handicap, ended up with forty-five victories, three losses, and two stalemates.^[7]

Although the appearances of the Turk were very profitable for Mälzel, he still fell into debt and was eventually sued by Beauharnais for nonpayment stemming back from his prior agreement. Mälzel was unable to sell the Turk to pay the debts off, and instead chose to take the Turk, as well as his other machines, to the United States. There, he opened an exhibition in New York City in 1826 which slowly built in popularity, including many newspaper stories and anonymous threats of exposure of the secret. Among the problems Mälzel had, however, was finding a proper director for the machine,^[7] having trained a nameless woman in France prior to coming to the United States. He ended up recalling a former director, William Schlumberger, from Europe to come to America and work for him again once Mälzel was able to provide the money for Schlumberger's transport.^[5] Before his arrival, Mälzel was forced to only exhibit the machine using endgames due to the lack of skill of his director, much to the chagrin of the public.^[7]

Upon the arrival of Schlumberger, the Turk debuted in Boston, spinning the story that the New York chess players could not handle full games and that the Boston players were much better opponents. This was a success for a number of weeks, and the tour moved to Philadelphia for three months. Following Philadelphia, Mälzel and company moved to Baltimore, Maryland, where it played for a number of months, including losing a match against Charles Carroll, a signer of the Declaration of Independence. The exhibition in Baltimore brought news that two brothers constructed their own machine, the Walker Chess-player. Mälzel viewed the competing machine and attempted to buy it, but the offer was declined and the duplicate machine toured for a number of years, never receiving the fame that Mälzel's machine did and eventually fell into obscurity.^[7]

Mälzel continued with exhibitions around the United States until 1828, where he took some time off and visited Europe, returning in 1829. Throughout the 1830s, Mälzel continued to tour the United States, moving as far west as the Mississippi River and visiting Canada. In Richmond, Virginia, the Turk was observed by Edgar Allan Poe, who was writing for the Southern Literary Manager at the time. Poe's essay, Maelzel's Chess Player was published in April 1836 and is considered the most famous essay on the Turk, even though many of Poe's hypotheses were incorrect.^[7]

Mälzel eventually brought the Turk to Havana, Cuba. In Cuba, Schlumberger died of yellow fever, leaving Mälzel without the best director of his machine. Dejected, he took the Turk back to Philadelphia and later made a second visit to Havana. Mälzel would pass away at sea in 1838 at age 66 during his return trip, leaving his machinery with the ship captain.^[7]

Upon the return of the ship that Mälzel died on, the various machines that Mälzel toured with, including the Turk, fell into the hands of John Ohl, a businessman and friend of Mälzel. He attempted to sell the Turk, but ultimately purchased the machine for $400 due to low bidding.^[7] Only when Dr. John Kearsley Mitchell, an admirer of the Turk from Philadelphia and Edgar Allen Poe's personal physician, approached Ohl did the Turk change hands again.^[1] Mitchell formed a restoration club and went about the business of repairing the Turk for public appearances, completing the restoration in 1840.^[7]

As interest in the Turk under the care of Mitchell outgrew the location that the Turk resided in, he and his club chose to donate the machine to the Chinese Museum of Charles Willson Peale. While the Turk still occasionally gave performances, it was eventually relegated to the corners of the museum and forgotten about until 5 July, 1854, when a fire that started at the National Theater in Philadelphia eventually reached the Museum and destroyed the Turk.^[7] According to Dr. Mitchell, he believed he had heard "through the struggling flames...the last words of our departed friend, the sternly whispered, oft repeated syllables, 'echec! echec!!'"^[13]

John Gaughan, a manufacturer of equipment for magicians based in Los Angeles, California, spent $120,000 building his own version of Kempelen's machine.^[7] The machine uses new parts with the exception of the original chessboard, which was stored separately from the original Turk and was not destroyed in the fire. The first public display of Gaughan's Turk was in November of 1989 at a history of magic conference. The machine was presented in a similar way to how Kempelen would, except for a change on the control of the machine, which was left to a computer.^[4]

While many books and articles were written during the Turk's existence about how the machine worked, most were inaccurate, basing their beliefs on assumptions as to its operation based on external observation. It was not until Dr. Silas Mitchell's series of articles for The Chess Monthly that the secret was fully revealed. Dr. Silas Mitchell, son of the final owner of the Turk, Dr. John Kearsley Mitchell,^[7] wrote that "no secret was ever kept as the Turk's has been. Guessed at, in part, many times, no one of the several explanations...ever solved this amusing puzzle." As the Turk was lost to fire at the time of this publication, Dr. Silas Mitchell felt that "[t]here [were] no longer any reasons for concealing from the amateurs of chess, the solution to this ancient enigma."^[13]

In 1859, a letter was published in the Philadelphia Sunday Dispatch by William F. Kummer. Kummer worked as a director under Dr. John Mitchell following the purchase of the machine from Ohl, and revealed another piece of the secret regarding smoke from the internal candle.^[7]

Later in 1859, an uncredited article appeared in Littell's Living Age. Purporting to be a the story of the Turk from French magician Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, it was rife with errors, ranging from dates of events to a story of a Polish officer who's legs were amputated, but ended up rescued by Kempelin and smuggled back to Russia inside the machine.^[7]

A new article about the Turk would not turn up until 1899, when The American Chess Magazine published an account of the Turk's match with Napoleon Bonaparte. The story was basically a review of previous accounts, and a substantive published account would not appear until 1947, when Chess Review published articles about the machine. Kenneth Harkness and Jack Staley Battel wrote the articles, which acted as a comprehensive history and description of the Turk, complete with new diagrams that synthesized information from previous publications. Another article in 1960, written in 1960 for American Heritage by Ernest Wittenberg, also provided new diagrams describing how the director sat inside the cabinet.^[7]

1949 brought the publication of Henry A. Davidson's A Short History of Chess, which talks of the Turk, giving significant weight to Poe's essay, which erroneously suggested that the player sat inside the Turk figure as opposed to the moving seat on the inside of the cabinet. A similar error would occur in Alex G. Bell's 1978 book, The Machine Plays Chess, which falsely asserted that "the operator was a trained boy (or very small adult) who followed the directions of the chess player who was hidden elsewhere on stage or in the theater..."^[7]

More books were published about the Turk toward the end of the twentieth century. Along with Bell's book, Charles Michael Carroll's The Great Chess Automaton was published in 1975 and focused more on the studies of the Turk. Bradley Ewart produced Chess: Man vs. Machine in 1980, which discussed the Turk as well as other purported chess-playing automatons.^[7]

It was not until the creation of Deep Blue, IBM's attempt at a computer that could challenge the world's best players,^[14] that interest increased again, and two more books were published: Gerald M. Levitt's The Turk, Chess Automaton in 2000,^[15] and Tom Standage's The Turk: The Life and Times of the Famous Eighteenth-Century Chess-Playing Machine, published in 2002.^[16] The Turk received further attention as a comparison to Deep Blue in the 2003 documentary Game Over: Kasparov and the Machine.^[17]

The Turk was so popular and mysterious that its construction directly and indirectly inspired a number of inventions and imitations,^[1] including Ajeeb, or "The Egyptian, an American imitation built by Charles Hopper^[18] that President Grover Cleveland played in 1885,^[19] and Mephisto, the self-descibed "most famous" machine of which little information is known.^[7]

The Turk was visited in London by Rev. Edmund Cartwright in 1874. He was was so intrigued by the Turk that he would later question whether "it is more difficult to construct a machine that shall weave than one which shall make all the variety of moves required in that complicated game." Cartwright would patent the prototype for a power loom within one year.^[7]

Sir Charles Wheatstone, an inventor, saw a later appearance of the Turk while it was under the ownership of Mälzel. There, he saw some of Mälzel's speaking machines and later presented a demonstration of speaking machines to a researcher and his son about them. Wheatstone loaned the teenage son, Alexander Graham Bell, a book by Kempelen about the speaking machines, and Bell would go on to invent the telephone.^[1]

El Ajedrecista was built as a chess-playing automaton for the World's Fair in Paris in 1914. Capable of playing endgames using electromagnets, it was the first true chess-playing automaton, and a precursor of sorts to Deep Blue.^[18]

In 2005, Amazon.com launched the Amazon Mechanical Turk. The web-based software application coordinates programming tasks with human intelligence, inspired in part by the way Kempelen's Turk operated.^[20] The program, still in beta, is designed to have humans perform tasks, such as color comparisons, that computers struggle with.^[21]

• Mechanical Turk player profile and games at Chessgames.com