1770 Mechanical Chess Player Inspired Babbage

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."

Comments

I read the Wired article

[CmdrTaco (editor)]

I read the Wired article when it came out in print a couple months ago, and I'd have to say I found it quite interesting. It seems to be the Turk was quite a feat in its time, convincing some of the world's most respected scientists that it was indeed a machine, when it was in fact not. It makes me think about today, when there is so much press covering everything, if it would be possible for something such as Deep Blue to be a similar hoax. I know IBM was very secretive about the hardware and coding and what not, so maybe all they did was stick Bobby Fischer inside. That thing sure is big enough to do that...