by The Mechanical Turk was one of the wonders of the 18th century: a chess playing robot that defeated chess masters across Europe.
And it was all completely fake.
The Mechanical Turk was the brainchild of a remarkable mind: inventor and engineer Wolfgang von Kempelen.
von Kempelen was born January 23, 1734, in Pressburg; now found in Slovakia, it was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He came from a noble family and received a broad academic education, studying law, philosophy, and mechanics at universities in Vienna and Rome.
Fluent in multiple languages and gifted in both science and the arts, von Kempelen impressed his instructors with his all-round brilliance. He was in effect a polymath, centuries before the term was coined.
After graduating with distinction, von Kempelen entered the Imperial civil service.
Beginning as a clerk in 1755, von Kempelen began a steady rise through the ranks. By the early 1760s he was a court councillor for the Hungarian town of Pozsony, by the end of the decade he was commissioner for the entire region.
This brought him regularly to the capital in Vienna, and eventually to the notice of the Empress, Maria Theresa.
Ascending to the throne in 1740, Maria Theresa had developed into a powerful ruler, considered both strong and compassionate. A devout Catholic with 16 children, she had conservative personal views but still embraced modern ideas, and oversaw a number of reforms.
By the time von Kempelen arrived at court in 1769, she was a beloved figure.
That same year, he was on hand to witness a royal performance by the French illusionist François Pelletier. Pelletier’s tricks dazzled the Empress; afterwards she challenged von Kempelen, whose intelligence and abilities were now well known, to come up with something better.
Eager to impress the Empress, von Kempelen vowed he would return a year later.
What von Kempelen presented in the spring of 1770, was astonishing.
He had created a life-size automaton, a mechanical device, called ‘The Turk’: a figure of a man dressed in Ottoman robes and a turban, seated behind a wooden cabinet, with a chessboard in front of him. The cabinet had doors at the front, inside von Kempelen revealed a complex array of gears, cogs, and machinery.
When he set the device in motion, the figure’s wooden arm could move and grasp the chess pieces, enabling it to play.
To the astonishment of his audience, the mechanical device could not only play chess, but defeat human opponents. Several members of the court played The Turk, when they all lost accomplished players were sent for; these were defeated as well.
Somehow, von Kempelen had created a robot that could think, perceive its surroundings, and act independently, tailoring its chess strategy to its opponent.
von Kempelen’s device caused a sensation. He originally intended it only for a one-off demonstration for the Empress, but it generated such excitement that he was eventually persuaded into further public displays.
Maria Theresa died in November 1780, the following year her heir, Emperor Joseph II, requested a repeat demonstration. After this, von Kempelen toured his Mechanical Turk around Europe.
The Turk played in Paris, London, and Berlin, often defeating skilled opponents. Although it was not invincible, and still occasionally lost to expert players.
In Paris, among its opponents was Benjamin Franklin, then the American ambassador to France. Although accounts differ on the game’s outcome, Franklin was reportedly impressed, and later praised the machine in his writings.
Across Europe, the device was considered one of the wonders of the age, another sign of the rapid advances brought by modern science.
In reality, the Turk was actually a brilliant hoax.
Hidden within the cabinet was a human chess master: an operator who used a sliding seat and levers to control the Turk’s arm. von Kempelen then placed cogs and levers in front of the hidden space, to complete the illusion of a fully mechanical device.
His audiences were fooled, and The Turk generated amazed responses wherever it appeared.
Von Kempelen died in 1804, his machine was then acquired by Johann Nepomuk Mälzel.
Mälzel was a German engineer turned showman, best known for inventing the metronome. From its earliest appearance he had understood The Turk was an illusion, after acquiring it he improved the device, giving it a more flexible arm.
He sold The Turk for a profit shortly afterwards, but later reacquired it and toured it around Europe.
Another famous match occurred in 1809 during the Napoleonic Wars, when Napoleon Bonaparte himself played the Turk during his occupation of Vienna. According to legend, Napoleon tried to cheat by making illegal moves—only for the Turk to respond by sweeping the pieces off the board in protest.
Napoleon was said to be impressed.
In 1826, Mälzel took The Turk to the United States.
In need of a skilled operator, he recruited William Schlumberger, an expert chess player from Alsace. Schlumberger joined Mälzel in Boston, where the Turk began a new round of exhibitions.
The automaton appeared in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore. In Philadelphia, the machine famously lost a game to a local woman, Mrs. Fisher, while in Baltimore it was defeated by Charles Carroll, an elderly signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Despite occasional defeats, the machine drew large crowds and sustained public interest. Mälzel promoted the Turk’s ability to play complete matches rather than just endgames, enhancing its reputation and mystique.
The public’s fascination with The Turk lead to speculation about its authenticity.
Many people guessed it must be a hoax, but varied on the method: magnets, mirrors, or even a hidden midget were proposed. Several public figures, including Edgar Allan Poe, attempted to debunk it; Poe published a famous essay in 1836 analysing the machine, but opinion remained divided.
Many people continued to accept it as a remarkable mechanical wonder.
Mälzel’s tour continued to Cuba, where tragedy struck: Schlumberger died of yellow fever in early 1838.
Unable to find a suitable replacement, Mälzel quickly fell into financial difficulty. He died at sea later that year while returning to the United States, leaving The Turk to the ship’s captain.
The device then passed through a few owners in the United States. Eventually it was acquired by The Peale Museum, in Philadelphia, America’s first dedicated natural history museum.
Silas Mitchell, the son of the museum’s owner, then published a detailed account of the machine’s inner workings, confirming that it had been an elaborate hoax. Mitchell’s account, along with mechanical drawings and reconstructions, revealed the ingenious design that had fooled so many.
In 1854, the museum burned down, and the Turk was destroyed in the fire.
Its fame had been such that it left quite a mark on the 19th century imagination. A number of short stories, plays and books were either based on The Turk, or included a Turk-like figure; most of these portrayed the device as fully sentient, and often nefarious.
Early examples of the fear many hold about artificial intelligence.
In the 21st century, Amazon named its online crowdsourcing platform, ‘Mechanical Turk’. The site allows businesses to outsource tasks not suitable for computers, to human workers around the world; a darkly comic nod to the operation of this famous hoax.
