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1770 Mechanical Chess Player Inspired Babbage

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the lighthearted-afternoon-read dept.

dipfan writes "A new book tells the extraordinary true story of a clock-work chess-playing "machine" named The Turk that wowed Europe and the US in the 18th and 19th century, beating Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon, among others. Although it turned out to be a cleverly designed trick, the device is credited with inspiring Charles Babbage (the father of the computer), who played and lost to the automaton in 1820, with the idea that a mechanical engine could be programed to perform tasks... and the rest is computing history, right up to IBM's Deep Blue. There's an article by the author at Wired, and the preface and first chapter of the book The Mechanical Turk available online."

13 of 160 comments (clear)

  1. A picture of the machine: by Chagrin · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://web.media.mit.edu/~wsack/CAA/chess-machine. html

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    I/O Error G-17: Aborting Installation

  2. Ebook heads-up by joebp · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's a free ebook on Maelzel's Chess Player, written by Edgar Allan Poe. It looks pretty good.

    1. Re:Ebook heads-up by Zach978 · · Score: 2, Informative

      Hmm, free? It seems it requires a Windows lisense (.exe?). Is that just a self extracting to a PDF or something?

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      "I told you a million times not to exaggerate!"
  3. Re:I read the Wired article by WoodenBoy · · Score: 2, Informative

    Here is the Wired article on it. The article was originally in the March 2002 magazine, which focused on AI (gaming and otherwise).

  4. If you ever get across to London... by mav[LAG] · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...you must go and see the working model of Babbage's difference engine #2 at the Science Museum. It was completed in 1991 by the staff using Babbage's drawings and worked first time.

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    --- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
    1. Re:If you ever get across to London... by CelticLo · · Score: 2, Informative

      Babbages Differential Engine No. 1 was gifted by Babbage to the "Kensington Musuem" after it secured the grant to build Engine No. 2 To quote Charles Babbage's autobiography "Passages from the Life of a Philosopher" It was commenced 1823. This portion put together 1833. The construction abandoned 1842. ... This portion was in the Exhibition 1862.

    2. Re:If you ever get across to London... by cornflux · · Score: 3, Informative

      Oddly enough, I've just returned from a week-long vacation (holiday, if you prefer) in London and was able to visit the Babbage exhibit.

      For as much as Babbage contributed, I found the exhibit extremely lacking in information and delinquent in relating the importance of his work.

      They did indeed have difference engine #2, however it was covered and being worked on by a couple gentlemen who did not appear willing or capable of fielding an inquiry.

      Also, the exhibit neglected to make any significant mention of Babbage's work outside of the difference engine(s): encryption, politics, analytical engine, etc.

      As a side note, I did, however, find that their weather exhibit was excellent and very informative. On the other hand, the mathematics exhibit was, like the Babbage exhibit, disappointing.

  5. Some extra pictures to illustrate the story by afflatus_com · · Score: 4, Informative
    An excellent story, but a little bereft of graphics. Here are some extra pictures to flush out the idea of the device:
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    Cast a Cold Eye
    On Life, on Death
    Horseman, pass by
    --W.B. Yeats' gravestone
  6. Another story about this by neolith · · Score: 4, Informative

    James Randi did a nice write up about this, with some great pictures and commentary about the machine on his site. You can find a direct link to the articles here and here. I especially enjoyed the artwork depicting how the person inside fit in the contraption and enabled it to play chess. This was a very, very clever little hoax!

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    Like my comments? Try my podcast: http://www.baldmove.com
  7. Impossible? by Alomex · · Score: 3, Informative

    "Kempelen's contraption was, of course, a hoax. It would have been impossible to build a genuine mechanical chess player using 18th-century clockwork technology."

    Don't sell old technology too short. While a fully playing chess computer was beyond their reach, there were genuine automata in the 18th and early 19th century that could play end-games mechanically. Another examples of amizingly advanced automaton is the Swiss scribe, which can be programed to write a persons name with a quilt in long-hand, including pausing to dip the quilt in the ink well.

    That would still be a challenging task for a robotic arm today.

    Lastly the entire mechanism that allowed the chessmen to be grasped by a person from inside the Tuks was not replicated until a few decades back, again by "advanced" robotic research.

  8. Re:Good read... by Paradise+Pete · · Score: 2, Informative
    How the hell did it work?

    Here's a good explanation.

  9. Re:Good read... by Paradise+Pete · · Score: 2, Informative

    Sorry, it's a two-part explanation. Here's the second part.

  10. Re:Good read... by darien · · Score: 3, Informative

    I read in today's Sunday Telegraph that the chess pieces were magnetic, and each square on the board had a metal flap attached to the underside which was held up by the magnet. The chap in the box could see which flap had dropped and which had flipped up and so work out which piece had been moved where and replicate it on his own (probably miniature) chessboard. The same article also described that the Turk's arm was actually part of a pantograph, so the man inside just had to move a pointer to the relevant place on his chess-board and the Turk's hand would move to the same place on the outside board. He then simply had to squeeze the bulb/lever that made the Turk close its hand, move the pantograph pointer to the new square, and let go. A very ingenious and (I would imagine) well-executed piece of engineering.

    Afraid I threw the paper away, and I can't find the article on the web, but I'm 99% certain this is all from Tom Standage's book.