What was Turk?
Turk was a machine playing chess created by German inventor Wolfgang von Kempelen in 1770 and exhibited 84 years. The machine could perform complicated puzzles and strategies and played a strong chess game against human opponents and won the vast majority. Turk was destroyed by fire in 1854 and revealed as a fraud in a series of magazine articles in chess month later. The wardrobe had many doors that opened up to reveal a complicated row of clock gears and a clear view through the cabinet. The machine also came up with a small coffin -shaped box that von Kepelen would place on the top of the cabinet and mysteriously looked into mysteriously, suggesting that he had some supernatural energy above the machine. If the opponent did an illegal movement, the machine would shake his head, returned an incorrect movable piece and made another turn. In later years, the machine was equipped with a voice box, which allowed him to tell Échec! (Frenchvicious for "check"). In addition to playing chess, Turk could also communicate through the letter album to answer viewers' questions.
Although Turk was exposed as a slot machine, an early type of robot, chess monthly articles exposed it as a machine operated by a human operator hidden inside the box. Many aspects of the machine were designed to report observers. For example, there was a sound similar to an hourly part every time Turk moved.
Turk was equipped with a sliding seat so that the operator could avoid the discovery when the cabinet door opened. The chessboard was thin and the chess pieces were magnetic, allowing the operator to see every movement, because the corresponding magnets inside the machine were attracted by active squares. The operator dominated Turk with the Pegboard's chessboard, which caused the Turk's left arm to move through the chessboard on the cabinet.With the dial, the operator could open and close Turk's hand over chess pieces, and other machines dominated Turk's facial expressions. There were also two brass discs, one inside and one outside the machine that allowed the operator and the lecturer to communicate.
Turk was first created and exhibited at Schönbrunn Palace for the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa. In 1783 Von Kempelen went on a European tour starting in Paris, where Benjamin Franklin played against him. Von Kempelen died in 1804 and his son sold the machine three years later to musician Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, who improved on the machine and exhibited it until his death in 1838. Shortly after Mälzel won the machine, Napoleon visited Schönbrunn Palace to test happiness.
Mälzel traveled around Turk in Italy in France and the whole UK before debuting it in America in 1826. He also exhibited a machine in Cuba. In 1838 he died at sea and left Turk with a ship's captain. As soon asHe returned Europe, changed his hands several times, and eventually ended up in the Peale Museum in Baltimor, Maryland, USA. Was destroyed in fire on July 5, 1854.
John Gaubhan, a manufacturer of Magicians in Los Angeles, began to build a reconstruction of the original Turk using the original chessboard in 1984. It took him five years and was first exhibited in November 1989.