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Pre-20th Century Gadgetery
The Byelorussian Hatter writes "Wired, presumably bored to death of Cellphones, Zunes, MairBook Nacs and what-have-you, looks back at the elegant inventions of a less civilized age. 'The Turk was a chess player concealed in a table packed with cogs and gears, contrived to give the appearance of a mighty chess-playing machine. Atop the table, an articulated automaton would be seen to make the moves determined by the master within. One of the 18th and 19th century's many illustrious hoaxes, the Turk is perhaps the greatest gadget that wasn't.'"
In case anyone hasn't put two and two together*, Amazon's Mechanical Turk is named in reference to the chess playing Turk from the article. Amazon's FAQ has more info.
* 5, for large values of two.
For shame that this article does not mention the father of enginering. He made robots, automatons that were highly complex. I wonder why non of his inventions is mentioned. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Jazari
My -1 Troll is actually a +1 funny. And my -1 flame is actually a +1 insightfull.