Okay, as a coaster enthusiast, here is my take on this.
1. They are regulating something that has a lower per capita injury/fatality rate than garden hoses, bowling, driving, walking up stairs, and really just about anything.
2. Given [1] this is obviously 'look good' legislation that, as usual, totally fails to see the cause of injuries.
3. By far the biggest cause of injuries is rider error. You know, people who don't "remain seated with your hands inside the car at all times". The next biggest cause (roughly 15%) is operator error. These type of accidents usually result because the operator did something stupid (IE was walking under the track while the coaster was running.) The other major cause of accidents (almost 5%) are caused by those with preexisting conditions (asthma, heart trouble, back trouble, etc). Again, essentially rider error, as the signs warn quite clearly that those with preexisting medical conditions should not ride.
4. Even assuming g forces are a danger (I disagree, but just for the sake of argument...), NJ is looking at it in the wrong way. Based on a large body of anecdotal evidence (I've ridden 153 coasters at 52 diffirent parks, total # of rides probably close to 5000), the only thing that ever causes discomfort are those hideous over the sholder restraints (Sometimes referred to as 'horsecollars'. These restraints let your HEAD do all the stopping under any sort of lateral acceleration. Ever since Karl Bacon of Arrow Dynamics came up with the idea in the early '70's, they have been causing headaches everywhere they are installed. Luckily, some companies are seeing the light. Schwarzkopf GMBH (one of the dominant builders of early looping rides) always used simple lapbars, and those ride like a dream. Premier Rides, maker of magnetically launched rides, has recently retrofitted almost all their rides with lapbars. Those have now gone from a boxing simulator to being world class rides.
Hate to say it, but you're dead wrong on the details of the incident. The ride you're referromg to is the 'City Jet' (http://rcdb.com/installationgallery402.htm?Pictur e=2).
The accident occurred on a ride called the 'Wild Wonder', installed in 1999, and removed later that same year. After modifications to fix the design flaw, that ride now operates at Magic Springs park in Arkansas.
What basically happened was that the car slipped backwards down the hill (after two diffirent safety systems simultaneously failed...) and the two passengers were ejected as the train rounded a very tight radius turn.
As both a musician and music fan, allowing your fans to trade live show bootlegs (and explicitly allow taping of same) can do wonders. Look what it did for Phish. In 3 years they went from playing college student centers to selling out Boston Garden. Before you mod me as offtopic, lemme get around to how this relates to online. Get listed on etree.org. Get on Furthur (http://furthurnet.com), which is a program for trading complete live shows in mp3 and shorten (SHN) format. Maybe get the ball rolling by posting a couple of soundboard recordings on Furthur. Don't worry about this cannabilzing your album sales. It won't. It very well may get people to buy more. I know I've bought over 10 Phish albums since I first downloaded a Phish show off Furthur.
Yea, I can imagine it. It would be a boring 'racing' game with poor controls, good (for 1996) graphics, and about as much replay appeal as boiled cabbage.
EMusic WAS great. After a recent server change, all of a sudden my homebrew full album downloader doesn't work. It's calling the exact URLs, but apparently their servers refuse connection for Python's URLLib. Shame. Bye Bye EMusic.com
1, How can we read the labels? 2. How hard will they be to keep track of? 3. What happends to liner notes?
Still, interesting idea. But why not make cd-sized discs that could hold 20-50 CD's worth of information? That'd be what.... 0.2 LOC? (Library of Congress)
It says NOTHING about running windows. It means you need to buy the Windows version to use the linux binaries, as opposed to issuing a new CD just for linux.
Quote: The result? The SafetypeTM is the only keyboard proven in a Major University Study to virtually eliminate the high-stress postures that contribute to Repetitive Stress Injuries, such as Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
My emphasis. This is always a big red flag. If it wasn't Podunk College, Thelma's Corner, AL, it would be named....
In the pre-copyright era, copyright really wasn't need because, by and large, copying simply wasn't possible, and when possible, was very, very, tedious.
The inside story of an ingenious chess-playing machine that thrilled crowds, terrified opponents, and won like clockwork.
By Tom Standage
One autumn day in 1769, a 35-year-old civil servant was summoned to the imperial court in Vienna to witness a magic show. Wolfgang von Kempelen - well versed in physics, mechanics, and hydraulics - was a trusted servant of Maria Theresa, the empress of Austria-Hungary. She had invited him in order to see what a scientific man would make of the magician's tricks. The event was to change the course of Kempelen's life.
For he was so unimpressed by the performance that, once it was over, Kempelen made an uncharacteristic and audacious claim. In front of the whole court, he declared that he could do better. Maria Theresa could hardly allow such a boast to pass without comment. Very well, she said. Excusing Kempelen from his official duties for six months, the empress challenged him to keep his word. Kempelen agreed not to return to the court until he was ready to stage a performance of his own.
He did not disappoint. In the spring of 1770, Kempelen reappeared before the empress and unveiled an extraordinary machine: a life-size mannequin seated behind a cabinet. The figure was made of carved wood and wore an ermine-trimmed robe, loose trousers, and a turban. The wooden box was 4 feet long, 2.5 feet deep, and 3 feet high, and rested on four brass casters. This meant the whole contraption could be moved around and rotated freely, so that it could be viewed easily from every angle. The front of the cabinet was divided into three doors of equal width, with a long drawer along the bottom. The wooden figure sat with its right arm extended, resting on the cabinet top, and its eyes stared down at a large chessboard directly in front of it. Its left hand held a long Turkish pipe, as though it had just finished smoking.
Stepping forward to address the audience, Kempelen announced that he had built a machine the likes of which had never been seen: an automaton, or mechanical toy, capable of playing chess. A skeptical murmur passed through the crowd. Kempelen explained that before demonstrating his invention, he would display its inner workings. He reached into his pocket and produced a set of keys, one of which he used to unlock the leftmost door on the front of the cabinet. Kempelen opened it to reveal an elaborate mechanism of densely packed wheels, cogs, levers, and clockwork machinery, including a large horizontal cylinder with a complex configuration of protruding studs, similar to that found in a musical box. As the audience scrutinized these workings, Kempelen opened another door directly behind the machinery and held a burning candle so that its flickering light was visible to spectators through the intricate clockwork. He then closed and locked the rear door.
Kempelen returned to the front, where he pulled out the long drawer to reveal a set of chess pieces in red and white ivory; he placed these on the top of the cabinet. Next, he unlocked and opened the two remaining doors in the front to reveal the main compartment, which contained only a red cushion, a small wooden casket, and a board marked with gold letters. Kempelen placed these items on a small table near the automaton.
Leaving all the doors and the drawer open, Kempelen rotated the automaton so that its back was to the crowd. Lifting up its robe, he revealed a small door in the figure's left thigh and one in its back, both of which opened to show more clockwork machinery. Kempelen then closed all the doors and the drawer, replaced the robe, and returned his contraption to its original position facing the onlookers. He slid the cushion beneath the figure's left elbow, removed the long pipe from its left hand, put the chess pieces on the appropriate squares, and reached inside the cabinet to make a final adjustment to the machinery. Finally, he placed two candelabras on top of the cabinet to illuminate the board.
Kempelen announced that the automaton was ready to play chess against anyone prepared to challenge it, and recruited a volunteer - a courtier named Count Cobenzl - from the audience. Kempelen explained that his mechanical man would play the white pieces and have the first move, that moves could not be taken back once made, and that it was important to place the pieces exactly on the center of the squares, so that the automaton would be able to grasp them correctly. The count nodded. Kempelen then inserted a large key into an aperture in the cabinet and wound up the clockwork mechanism with a loud ratcheting sound.
Once Kempelen stopped turning the key there was an agonizing silence. Then, after a brief pause, the sound of whirring and grinding clockwork could be heard coming from inside. The carved figure slowly turned its head from side to side, as though surveying the board. To the utter astonishment of the audience, the mechanical man then lurched to life, reaching out its left arm and moving one of its chessmen forward. The room cried out in amazement. The game had begun.
The sight of a machine playing chess was astounding enough, but the Turk, as it came to be known, also proved to be a formidable opponent. Count Cobenzl was swiftly defeated; the automaton was a fast, aggressive player, and subsequently proved to be capable of beating most people within half an hour. Kempelen, it seemed, had built a mechanical man whose clockwork mind could outthink most humans.
The Turk's sensational performance delighted the empress. Kempelen and his automaton made many more appearances before the royal family, government ministers of Austria-Hungary and of foreign countries, and other eminent visitors to the court. His extraordinary creation became the talk of Vienna, and the news of its triumphs quickly spread throughout Europe.
After the empress died, her son, Joseph II, commanded Kempelen to take the Turk on a tour of the courts of Europe. The inventor and his automaton went on to visit France, England, the Netherlands, and Germany. In Paris, the Turk defeated Benjamin Franklin, who, among his many other interests, was a chess fanatic. It suffered a rare defeat at the hands of a Frenchman known as Philidor, widely regarded as the finest player in Europe. Members of the Académie des Sciences, one of the world's foremost scientific societies, scrutinized the Turk, but they were no more able to fathom the secret of its operation than anyone else.
Wherever it went, the Turk inspired a torrent of pamphlets, newspaper articles, and books debating how it worked. Was it operated by a hidden chess-playing monkey? Was a child, a dwarf, or a legless war veteran lurking inside the cabinet? It seemed impossible; one eyewitness flatly declared that there was "no possibility of its concealing anything the size of my hat." Another school of thought suggested that magnetism, which was still only dimly understood, was involved. Perhaps, went the theory, Kempelen directed his contraption from a distance by moving a magnet in his pocket. Yet another explanation proposed that it was controlled by an offstage operator tugging on very thin wires. Or perhaps Kempelen was pushing tiny buttons, built into the Turk's cabinet, to direct its moves. There were also plenty of observers prepared to accept the automaton at face value as a genuine thinking machine.
After Kempelen's death, the Turk was bought by Johann Maelzel, a maker of musical automata who is also remembered as the inventor of the metronome (though he actually stole the design from someone else). Under Maelzel's ownership, the Turk toured Europe for many years. In 1809, it played its most famous game, against Napoléon Bonaparte, who attempted to fool it by making deliberately incorrect moves. After three such tries, the Turk ended the game in protest by sweeping its arm over the chessboard, knocking over all the pieces - to Napoléon's delight. Charles Babbage, the pioneer of the mechanical computer, was another famous opponent; he lost two games to the Turk. Babbage was certain it was under human control, though he was not sure how. But he started to wonder whether a genuine chess-playing machine could, in fact, be constructed.
Deeply in debt, Maelzel fled to America in 1825, taking the Turk with him. The mechanical man made regular appearances in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, then toured the south and even went to Havana. A 26-year-old Edgar Allan Poe encountered the Turk in December 1835 in Richmond, Virginia. He concluded that it was controlled by someone hiding inside the cabinet, and the following year published an account of how he believed the operator remained hidden. The style of Poe's prose foreshadowed his later mystery and detective stories. Eventually, interest in the Turk waned, and it spent its last days in a museum in Philadelphia, where it was destroyed in a fire on July 5, 1854. After 85 years and countless chess games, the Turk's spectacular career was over.
A fast, aggressive player, "the Turk" beat most people within half an hour. Its victims included Ben Franklin and, in a dramatic showdown, Napoléon Bonaparte.
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. That so many people - even those who supposedly had scientific backgrounds - were taken in is not as surprising as it might seem, however. The Turk's debut occurred at the start of the industrial revolution, as the relationship between men and machines was being redefined; it was a time when new technology seemed to offer boundless possibilities. Why not a thinking, chess-playing machine?
That's what the great player Philidor seems to have thought, despite his victory against the Turk in the summer of 1783. That same summer saw the first public demonstration of a hot air balloon, by the Montgolfier brothers, in the south of France. The event caused a sensation in Paris and contributed to an intellectual climate in which people believed anything was possible.
The fabulous lineup of clockwork animals and mechanical men on show in Europe at the time also fostered the idea that the Turk might, after all, be genuine. From their origins as glorified clocks, automata had grown steadily more complex throughout the 18th century. One popular type was the mechanical picture - a painting with moving parts driven by an elaborate mechanism hidden behind or within the frame. Windup ornaments that dispensed cutlery, spices, water, and wine sat on the tables of many well-to-do families; mechanical dancers, animals, and singing birds decorated music boxes and snuff cases. An Englishman named James Cox made an 8-foot-high mechanical elephant encrusted with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and pearls.
Other famous automata included a writer, a draftsman, and a harpsichord player constructed by Henri-Louis Jaquet-Droz, a member of a Swiss family of clockmakers. He programmed them to write, draw, and play music using irregularly shaped disks, called cams, threaded on to a spindle. As the spindle rotated, spring-loaded levers resting on the cams moved up and down and controlled the motion of the automaton's various parts by pushing and pulling on connecting rods. By paying meticulous attention to the shapes of the various cams, it was possible to program these figures to make coordinated movements of extraordinary grace and subtlety. Cams can now be found in all kinds of machinery; they are, for example, used to synchronize the opening and closing of valves in internal combustion engines.
The most famous automata of all were built by a Frenchman named Jacques de Vaucanson. In 1737, he displayed a mechanical flute player in Paris to great acclaim and allowed it to be scrutinized by members of the Académie des Sciences, in order to dispel any question of trickery. Juvigny, a French politician, wrote that "at first many people would not believe that the sounds were produced by the flute which the automaton was holding... The most incredulous, however, were soon convinced that the automaton was in fact blowing the flute, and that the breath coming from his lips made it play and that the movement of his fingers determined the different notes."
Next, Vaucanson built a boy who played a drum with one hand and a pipe held by the other; the sound of the pipe was even more dependent on the air pressure, the tonguing, and the position of the mechanical figure's fingers than the flute player's music was. But it was Vaucanson's third automaton that became his most famous. He decided to imitate an animal; the result, Vaucanson explained in a letter to a contemporary, was "an artificial duck made of gilded copper that drinks, eats, quacks, splashes about on the water, and digests his food like a living duck." It could stretch out its neck, take grain from a spectator's hand, and then swallow, digest, and excrete it. Its wings could flap and were anatomically exact copies of real ones, with each bone rendered in metal and adorned with a few feathers. While spectators were struck by how lifelike it appeared, Vaucanson was chiefly interested in the duck's innards, which he left exposed to view. The insides imitated the digestive process by dissolving grain in an artificial stomach, from where it was passed along a flexible tube and excreted. This involved a significant technological development, since it was the first time a tube had been made of India rubber, or caoutchouc. Such tubing proved to have many other uses.
Vaucanson became a celebrity; Voltaire described him as a "rival to Prometheus." Having built machines that could mimic respiration and digestion, Vaucanson made no secret of his dream of building an artificial man. He hoped it would be possible to use it "to perform experiments on animal functions, and thence to gather inductions to know the different states of health of men so as to remedy their ills."
In 1741, Vaucanson accepted a lucrative offer from the government to apply his mechanical ingenuity to the modernization of the French weaving industry. He drew up elaborate plans to transform manufacturing methods and work practices. But his scheme was abandoned when the silk workers of Lyons, who were to try out his new ideas, complained that they would be herded into factories and forced to act as mere drudges on a production line. Wary of becoming human parts in what would be, in effect, a huge automaton, they rioted in the streets, forcing Vaucanson to flee for his life. He returned to Paris and took a low-profile job as the official examiner of new mechanical inventions for the Académie des Sciences.
Kempelen was familiar with Vaucanson's work and shared his interest in building machines that could imitate human faculties. (In addition to creating the Turk, Kempelen spent many years researching the mechanism of speech, and in the 1770s he produced the first speech synthesizers capable of articulating entire sentences.) He must have been aware that most observers found Vaucanson's constructions incomprehensibly complicated. With the introduction of the steam engine and the power loom across Europe, there seemed to be no limit to the potential of mechanical technology. The Turk cleverly exploited this perception.
After two games against the Turk, Charles Babbage began to sketch out plans for his own thinking machine. This was the genesis of the first mechanical computer.
There are obvious similarities to the rise of the computer era in modern times. The creations of Vaucanson, Kempelen, and their contemporaries are arguably the ancestors of almost all modern machinery; automata occupied the same intersection of technology, entertainment, and commerce that computers do today. Then, as now, many people were ambivalent about the new machines. On one hand, they were fascinated - public exhibitions of automata were wildly popular in London and Paris during the 18th century - but they were also concerned that humans might end up being superseded. Just as science fiction movies of the 1960s featured evil robots and computers, 18th-century books and plays explored the dramatic possibilities of thinking machines, or of people concealed inside boxes and pretending to be machines. While many of these stories were straightforward comedies or romances, a darker mood was also abroad: The Turk's tour of Europe coincided with the Luddite riots and Mary Shelley's publication of Frankenstein.
In the end, the Turk was taken seriously because it provided a starting point for discussion of the promise - and limits - of machinery. Even scientific men who could see through the hoax enjoyed the debate spurred by the Turk. Robert Willis, a young Englishman who in 1821 published one of many books attempting to explain how the Turk worked, founded his argument on the assumption that a chess-playing machine was simply impossible. "The phenomena of the chess player are inconsistent with the effects of mere mechanism," he wrote, "for however great and surprising the powers of mechanism may be, the movements which spring from it are necessarily limited and uniform. It cannot usurp and exercise the faculties of mind; it cannot be made to vary its operations, so as to meet the ever-varying circumstances of a game of chess." Automata might be able to do clever things, he conceded, but they could not respond to events. They could not be, to use the modern term, interactive.
Even though Charles Babbage agreed with Willis that the Turk was a hoax, his experience with it led him to exactly the opposite conclusion about machine intelligence. Babbage had long toyed with the idea of building an automaton that could perform mathematical operations, and in 1821, shortly after playing his two games against the Turk, he sketched out his first plans for such a machine. This was the genesis of Babbage's first mechanical computer, the Difference Engine. Although he toiled for many years and spent an enormous amount of money - much of it provided by the British government - Babbage never completed it. One reason was that halfway through construction, Babbage dreamed up an even more ambitious machine: the Analytical Engine, which would be capable of far more complex calculations. He lost interest in the Difference Engine but was then unable to raise funds for his new design. Even so, Babbage's insight into the Analytical Engine's theoretical capabilities prefigured many elements of modern computer science. In particular, he argued that a suitably powerful mechanical engine would be able to play games of skill such as ticktacktoe, checkers, and chess. He even sketched out a rough algorithm for playing board games with movable pieces, including chess - the first time that anyone had attempted to devise one. Babbage concluded that, in theory at least, there was no reason why a genuine mechanical chess player could not be built, though its cost and size would make the idea impractical.
By the mid-19th century, public understanding of what mechanical technology could and could not do was on a firmer footing than at the time of the Turk's debut, and most people had come to regard chess-playing machines as improbable. With the rise of the telegraph - a revolutionary new form of communication - electrical devices began to eclipse mechanical ones as the embodiment of the technological zeitgeist. Little wonder that interest in the Turk declined. A few years after its fiery demise, nobody was terribly surprised when the truth emerged: The chess player had indeed been controlled by a concealed operator using a clever system of folding partitions to remain hidden while the automaton's interior was open to view.
The Turk is gone, but not quite forgotten. It is fondly remembered by historians of magic, chess enthusiasts, and, perhaps surprisingly, computer scientists. Indeed, Kempelen's contraption has taken on a new significance since the invention of the digital computer. Artificial intelligence researchers started writing chess-playing programs in the 1940s, showing just how prescient Kempelen had been in suggesting that the game was a good first step for machine intelligence. And with its setup of a man pretending to be a machine, the Turk anticipated the standard test proposed by British scientist Alan Turing in 1950: A device can be deemed intelligent if it can pass for a human in a written question-and-answer session.
Yet the most fundamental reason for the Turk's enduring popularity has only recently become apparent, following the construction of a replica by John Gaughan, a magician based in Los Angeles. Like Kempelen and Maelzel before him, Gaughan opens and closes the doors of his creation to reveal its empty interior; his Turk then springs into life. Even if you know how it works, the illusion is remarkably compelling. Ultimately, the original Turk's success depended on its spectators' deep-seated desire to be deceived. In more ways than one, Kempelen's chess-playing machine was an illusion that directly exploited the faculties of the human mind.
Read a Sample Chapter of THE TURK: The Life and Times of the Famous Eighteenth-Century Chess-Playing Machine
C H A P T E R O N E The Queen's Gambit Accepted The Queen's Gambit (D4 D5 C4): An opening in which White attempts to sacrifice his queen's bishop's pawn to accelerate the development of his position. Black accepts the gambit by taking the offered pawn. You seek for knowledge and wisdom as I once did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been.
--Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)
Automata are the forgotten ancestors of almost all modern technology. From computers to compact-disc players, railway engines to robots, the origins of today's machines can be traced back to the elaborate mechanical toys that flourished in the eighteenth century. As the first complex machines produced by man, automata represented a proving ground for technology that would later be harnessed in the industrial revolution. But their original uses were rather less utilitarian. Automata were the playthings of royalty, both as a form of entertainment in palaces and courts across Europe and as gifts sent from one ruling family to another. As well as being a source of amusement, automata provided a showcase for each nation's scientific prowess, since they embodied what was, at the time, the absolute cutting edge of new technology. As a result, automata had a far greater social and cultural importance than their outward appearance as mere toys might suggest.
The first automata were essentially scaled-down versions of the elaborate mechanical clocks that adorned cathedrals across Europe from medieval times. As well as displaying the time, these clocks often had astronomical features (such as the phase of the moon) and, in some cases, entire mechanical theaters that sprang to life on particular occasions. A typical configuration involved figures of the Madonna and Child, who would appear through a doorway on specific feast days as the clock struck the hour. They would be followed by figures representing the three kings, shepherds, and so on, all of whom would genuflect before the Madonna, present their gifts, and then disappear through another door. A good example can still be seen today on the clock tower of St. Mark's in Venice. Municipal clocks in town squares subsequently adapted this formula but replaced the religious figures with kings, knights, trumpeters, birds, and other animals. These clocks provided the inspiration for smaller and increasingly elaborate automata that clockmakers sold to rich customers. As these devices became more complicated, their time-keeping function became less important, and automata became first and foremost mechanical amusements in the form of mechanical theaters or moving scenes.
One popular kind of automaton was the mechanical picture, a painting with moving parts driven by an elaborate clockwork mechanism hidden behind or within the frame. Another type of automaton, also intended as a conversation piece, took the form of a table ornament. Such devices could hold cutlery, napkins, and spices, had spouts to dispense wine or water, were decorated with moving figures or animals, and often incorporated a clock. A particularly fine example, made for Emperor Rudolph II by Hans Schlottheim, a German automaton maker, can be seen today in the British Museum.
Another influence on the design of automata was the long tradition of imitating nature through the construction of mechanical animals. The Italian artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci, for example, designed a flying machine modeled on a bird and is said to have made a mechanical lion. His fifteenth-century German contemporary, Johann Müller, known as "Regiomontanus," presented Emperor Maximilian with an iron fly and a mechanical eagle, which is reputed to have escorted the emperor to the city gates of Nuremberg, though exactly how is unclear. Even less plausible is the brass fly constructed by Bishop Virgilius of Naples. It supposedly chased all the real flies from the city, which remained free of flies for eight years.
Inspired by such tales, makers of automata enjoyed the challenge of making machines that were capable of moving in a lifelike manner. There were music boxes and snuffboxes out of which singing birds or dancing figures appeared, and innumerable mechanical animals. One eighteenth-century automaton-maker, an Englishman named James Cox, made an eight-foot-high mechanical elephant encrusted with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and pearls. Cox was renowned for his automata and mechanical clocks, many of which were sold or sent as gifts to China by the East India Company. His other creations included a mechanical tiger, a peacock, and a swan.
Sometimes automata imitated living things a little too credibly, as was the case with a supposed automaton harpsichord player that made an appearance at the court of the French king Louis XV during the 1730s and enchanted listeners with its musical ability. The king insisted on being shown the mechanism that could play in such a charming and lifelike manner, whereupon a five-year-old girl was found concealed inside the machine.
Other famous (but genuine) automata included the writer, draftsman, and harpsichord player constructed by Henri-Louis Jaquet-Droz, a member of a Swiss family of clockmakers. The movements of these automata, which could write, draw, and play music respectively, were programmed using irregularly shaped disks, called cams, threaded onto a spindle. As the spindle rotated, spring-loaded levers resting on the cams moved up and down, and controlled the motion of the automaton's various parts by pushing and pulling on connecting rods. By paying meticulous attention to the shapes of the various cams, one could program an automaton to make coordinated, lifelike movements of extraordinary grace and subtlety. Similar writing automata were built in the 1750s for Maria Theresa, empress of Austria- Hungary, by Friedrich von Knauss, an Austrian inventor who is also credited with the invention of the typewriter.
Since only the very rich could afford to buy their extravagant contraptions, makers of automata moved in elevated circles and often ended up in the direct employ of kings, queens, and emperors. Building automata thus provided a good way for serious-minded clockmakers, engineers, or scientists seeking patronage to demonstrate their abilities and establish reputations for themselves; tinkering with mechanical toys could lead to both fame and fortune. Perhaps the best example is provided by the Frenchman Jacques de Vaucanson, whose inventions dazzled Europe in the mid- eighteenth century, and whose renown as an automaton maker enabled him to move effortlessly between the worlds of entertainment, industry, and science.
Vaucanson was born in 1709, the youngest of ten children, and studied theology at the Jesuit college in Grenoble with a view to becoming a monk. He also enjoyed building mechanical toys, and he soon found that this was incompatible with his religious vocation. According to one story, he built tiny flying toys in the form of angels, which angered his superiors; another tale suggests that it was a table automaton that got Vaucanson into trouble with a senior official of his religious order. In any case, forced to choose between his religious calling and his enthusiasm for elaborate machinery, he renounced the religious life and decided instead to devote himself to building automata.
Like other automaton makers, Vaucanson was particularly interested in building machines capable of imitating the natural processes of living beings, including respiration, digestion, and the circulation of the blood. His ultimate goal was to build an artificial man. But Vaucanson soon realized that in order to pursue this goal, he would first have to put his talents to commercial use and raise money "by producing some machines that could excite public curiosity." Displays of automata were becoming increasingly popular, particularly in Paris and London, where they provided an opportunity for the public to witness a variety of elaborate machinery that they would never have been able to afford to buy for themselves.
The automaton that first brought Vaucanson to public attention took the form of a flute player. One day in 1735, while walking through some public gardens in Paris, he saw a statue of a boy holding a flute to his lips and was inspired to build a moving statue that could actually play melodies. The primary purpose of the automaton was to enable Vaucanson to investigate the human respiratory system, and to this end he furnished it with artificial lungs, windpipe, and mouth, to which it held its flute. The lungs consisted of three sets of bellows, driven by a rotating crankshaft, to ensure a constant flow of air at low, medium, and high pressure. A set of valves adjusted the amount of air at each pressure that was allowed into the windpipe, and another valve in the mouth regulated the airflow, performing the function of the tongue. The movements of these valves, together with those of the fingers and the lips, were controlled by a set of spring-loaded levers whose ends rested on the surface of a rotating drum. The surface of the drum was covered with small studs; as the ends of the levers passed over these studs, they rose and fell, causing the automaton to move its fingers and lips accordingly. This meant that every aspect of the automaton's complex operation could be programmed in advance by inserting a suitable configuration of studs into the surface of the drum. The automaton could thus be made to play intricate melodies and mimic almost all of the subtleties of a human flute player's breathing and musical expression.
Vaucanson put his flute player on public display in Paris in October 1737, and it was an immediate success. Mindful of the false automaton that had deceived the court of Louis XV, Vaucanson subsequently allowed his flute player to be scrutinized by members of the Academy of Sciences in Paris, one the world's leading scientific societies, to dispel any question of trickery. One account of the event written by Juvigny, a French politician, recorded that "at first many people would not believe that the sounds were produced by the flute which the automaton was holding. These people believed that the sounds must come from an organ enclosed in the body of the figure. The most incredulous, however, were soon convinced that the automaton was in fact blowing the flute, and that the breath coming from his lips made it play and that the movement of his fingers determined the different notes. The machine was submitted to the most minute examination and to the strictest tests. The spectators were permitted to see even the innermost springs and to follow their movements." Vaucanson's flute player was thus proven to be an entirely genuine automaton. What the false automaton had accomplished through trickery, Vaucanson had achieved through a combination of ingenuity and the latest in mechanical technology.
Within a few months he had completed a second automaton, this time of a boy playing a pipe with one hand and a drum with the other. With only one hand to play the three-holed pipe, the sound it produced was far more dependent on the air pressure, the tonguing, and the position of the automaton's fingers. It thus presented a further challenge to Vaucanson's ability to mimic human subtleties. But it was Vaucanson's third automaton, a model of the digestive system, that was to become his most famous creation. Instead of building it in the form of a person, Vaucanson decided to imitate an animal and built a mechanical duck.
He described this automaton in a letter to a contemporary as "an artificial duck made of gilded copper that drinks, eats, quacks, splashes about on the water, and digests his food like a living duck." The duck could stretch out its neck, take grain from a spectator's hand, and then swallow, digest, and excrete it. The duck's wings were anatomically exact copies of real wings, with each bone rendered in metal and adorned with a few feathers. The duck could even flap its wings and create a gentle breeze. But while spectators were chiefly struck by the extraordinarily lifelike nature of the duck, Vaucanson was chiefly interested in its innards, which he left exposed to view. The duck's insides imitated the digestive process by dissolving the grain in an artificial stomach, from where it was passed along tubes and excreted. In the process of building this automaton, Vaucanson pioneered the development of flexible rubber tubing.
In common with Vaucanson's other automata, the duck was mounted on a wooden pedestal, and its mechanism was powered by a falling weight, in the same way as a grandfather clock. The weight was suspended on a cord, which was wrapped around a large drum. As the weight fell, it turned the drum, thus directing the duck's movements through an elaborate system of cams and levers. In the words of Juvigny, "During the time that this artificial animal was eating grain from someone's hand, drinking and splashing in the water brought to him in a vase, passing his excrements, flapping and spreading his wings and imitating all the movements of a living duck, everybody was allowed to look inside the pedestal. In this were all the wheels, all the levers, and all the wires communicating through the animal's legs with the different parts of his body and this was likewise open to view. As with the fluteplayer, a weight was the one and only source of power to set the whole thing in motion and keep it moving."
Such was the acclaim that greeted these extraordinary machines--Voltaire described their inventor as "bold Vaucanson, rival to Prometheus"--that Vaucanson allowed them to go on a tour of the courts of Europe, as ambassadors for French ingenuity and scientific advancement. Vaucanson was made a member of the Academy of Sciences in Paris; King Frederick II of Prussia offered him a job with a generous salary of 12,000 livres; he was even given the opportunity by Louis XV of France to go on an expedition to Guiana in order to further the development of his new rubber tubing.
However, Vaucanson decided to stay in France and pursue his goal of building an artificial man. Once it was completed, he hoped to use this automaton "to perform experiments on animal functions, and thence to gather inductions to know the different states of health of men so as to remedy their ills." But this ambitious project quickly stalled, so in 1741 Vaucanson accepted the offer of the lucrative government post of inspector of manufactures, with responsibility for applying his mechanical ingenuity to the modernization of the French weaving industry. He drew up elaborate plans to transform manufacturing methods and work practices. But his reorganization plans were abandoned when the silk workers of the city of Lyons, who were to try out his new ideas, heard of his scheme and complained that they would be herded into factories and forced to act as mere drudges on a production line. Wary of becoming human parts in what would be, in effect, a huge automaton, they rioted in the streets, forcing Vaucanson to disguise himself as a monk and flee for his life.
Vaucanson returned to Paris, where he decided to withdraw from the limelight. In 1743, he sold his trio of automata to a consortium of businessmen from Lyons, who showcased them at the Haymarket theater in London and subsequently displayed them across Europe. Vaucanson was appointed official examiner of new machine inventions at the Academy of Sciences in Paris and spent his remaining years working on many other inventions, including a number of improvements to machine tools such as lathes, milling machines, and drills. He also devised a machine to manufacture an endless chain and spent many years working on a power loom that could weave silk automatically, without the need for human intervention. With this machine, Vaucanson declared, "a horse, an ox or an ass can make cloth more beautiful and much more perfect than the most able silkworkers . . . each machine makes each day as much material as the best worker, when he is not wasting time." But his weaving machine never got past the experimental stage and was not adopted by the weaving industry. Vaucanson never built his artificial man either. He was, however, responsible for causing a surge in public interest in automata. His work paved the way for many subsequent inventions and inspired other automaton makers--including Wolfgang von Kempelen.
As one of Maria Theresa's senior officials, Wolfgang von Kempelen would have seen a procession of automata and other scientific amusements being presented to the empress at her court in Vienna, including musical automata, mechanical animals, and other contraptions. But he was no ordinary observer, for he had taught himself the principles of physics, mechanics, and hydraulics, even though he had come to the subject relatively late in life. This meant he was able to appreciate how the various automata worked, and to observe which ones were regarded as most impressive by spectators. At some point, he started to hatch a plan for an automaton of his own.
As a wealthy civil servant, Kempelen was an unlikely automaton maker; it seems he was simply looking for a challenge beyond the humdrum routine of his day-to-day duties. For although he was doing well in his career, life at the court was insufficiently stimulating to someone with such a wide range of interests.
Born in 1734, as a young man Kempelen had studied philosophy and law in Vienna. He then made an artistic pilgrimage to Italy before being formally introduced to the Viennese court by his father, Engelbert, a retired customs officer, in 1755. A strikingly handsome twenty-one-year-old who spoke several languages, Kempelen made an immediate impression. He was given the important task of translating the Hungarian civil code from Latin into German, which Maria Theresa had made the official language throughout her newly united kingdom of Austria-Hungary. Kempelen retired to his living quarters and completed the work in a few days. His translation was hailed as a masterpiece; it seemed extraordinary that he could have produced so flawless a translation of such a complex text in so little time. Kempelen was soon appointed counselor to the imperial court, with a salary three times what his father had earned. On the official document confirming his appointment, Maria Theresa wrote, "The Hungarian court will benefit greatly from young Mr. Kempelen."
Kempelen was indeed a valuable asset to the court: he was hardworking and conscientious in his professional capacity, while being charming and gregarious in person. In September 1757, with his fortunes rising fast, Kempelen married a lady-in-waiting at the court, and soon afterward he was promoted further. But Kempelen's wife, Franciscka, died suddenly a few weeks later. Shocked and grief-stricken, Kempelen responded by immersing himself in his hobby: scientific investigation. As a wealthy man, he was able to afford the expensive materials needed to equip his own workshop, where he devoted his spare time to research and experimentation. He swiftly collected an assortment of the latest scientific equipment and all the wood- and metal- working tools of a joiner, a locksmith, and a watchmaker. Adjoining his workshop was his study, which was lined with books, antiques, and engravings. One of Kempelen's friends wrote of him that "his predominant passion is invention, in which he employs almost every moment which the duties of his situation leave at his disposal."
As his interest in science and mechanics grew, Kempelen continued to prosper at the court. In 1758 he was appointed controller of the imperial salt mines in Transylvania, and he was promoted to director of the mines in 1766, by which time he had also remarried. He now felt confident enough to put his scientific knowledge into practice, and he devised a system of pumps to drain the mines when they became flooded with water. Following the success of this project, he was asked to design the waterworks for the castle in his hometown of Pressburg, the capital of Hungary, a few miles to the east of Vienna. (Pressburg was called Poszony in Hungarian and is now the Slovakian town of Bratislava.)
In 1768 Kempelen was given the challenging task of coordinating the settlement of the mountainous Banat province of Hungary. While in Banat he solved a local mystery, freeing several wrongly imprisoned men from jail. He also planned villages and designed houses, and over the next three years thousands of families settled in the region. During this time Kempelen spent a lot of time in Banat but made frequent visits to Vienna to report back on his progress. It was on one of these visits, in the autumn of 1769, that he was invited by Maria Theresa to attend the scientific conjuring show being presented to the court that evening by a visiting Frenchman named Pelletier.
Maria Theresa was particularly interested in science and had an unusually enlightened attitude toward it for her time. Soon after coming to the throne she had, for example, taken a strong line against the overzealous persecution of people accused of being vampires or witches. On one occasion she pardoned a man who had been found guilty of witchcraft and was due to be beheaded, declaring, "Witches can only be found where there is ignorance. This man is no more capable of witchcraft than I." She was also an advocate of the practice of inoculation against smallpox. Following an outbreak of the disease in Vienna in 1767 that claimed the lives of several members of her own family, the empress had her own sons inoculated and subsequently paid for the inoculation of dozens of poor children.
The empress was aware of Kempelen's growing reputation in scientific circles and hoped he would be able to explain to her how Pelletier's conjuring tricks worked. Kempelen was known to be good at explaining technical matters when asked to do so, without being a bore. "It is very rare to hear him speak of mechanism, notwithstanding it is his dominant passion," noted one of his friends, who praised the "astonishing fluency" of Kempelen's explanations "if the conversation be led to this subject." Kempelen agreed to do his best to explain the conjurer's tricks to the empress and took a seat near her in the audience. Pelletier, who is thought to have been a member of the prestigious Academy of Sciences in Paris, finished preparing his equipment and indicated that he was ready to begin. Maria Theresa nodded, and the performance began.
The exact nature of the "magnetic games" performed by Pelletier is uncertain. But his routine probably had as much in common with a scientific lecture as with a modern conjuring show. It is likely that there would have been chemical reactions, explosions, demonstrations of magnetism, and a number of tricks involving automata. Mixing scientific demonstrations and automata with more traditional, old- fangled conjuring would have given the whole performance a vital veneer of scientific respectability. At the time, conjurors were at pains to stress that their tricks relied on "natural" (or "white") magic and thus did not contravene the divine laws of nature, unlike "supernatural" (or "black") magic, which was thought to involve the intervention of the devil.
Throughout the performance Kempelen and the empress chatted, Kempelen drawing on his scientific knowledge to explain how the tricks worked. He was not at all impressed by what he saw. Indeed, he seems to have been rather irritated by the Frenchman's sneering and condescending tone, with its implication that it was the role of France to instruct the other nations of Europe in scientific matters. Once the show was over, Maria Theresa asked Kempelen, in his capacity as a scientific expert, his opinion of the performance. To the surprise of everyone present, Kempelen calmly responded that he believed himself capable of constructing a machine, the effect of which would be much more surprising, and the deception far more complete, than anything the empress had just witnessed.
Kempelen was known as a dependable and serious person, so this impetuous claim seemed entirely out of character and was greeted with laughter. But Kempelen was not joking. The empress could hardly allow such a boast to pass without comment, particularly since the matter was now one of national pride. Excusing him from his official duties in Banat and Vienna for six months, she challenged Kempelen to deliver on his promise and to build an automaton more impressive than anything that had been seen in any of the courts of Europe. Kempelen agreed not to return until he was ready to stage a performance of his own.
He went back to his home in Pressburg, where he lived with his second wife, Anna Maria, and their young daughter, Theresa. Abandoning his usual duties, he retreated to his workshop, where he spent the next few months fashioning wood, brass, and clockwork machinery into the chessplaying automaton that would unexpectedly ensure his place in history. By the end of the allotted six months, Kempelen was ready to transport his automaton to Vienna for its debut. By keeping his word, outdoing Pelletier, and impressing the empress, he could expect to be well rewarded. But things did not turn out quite as Kempelen imagined.
Slashdot Mirror
> or possibly help engineer some sort of
:)
> food/weed that will grown nearly anywhere.
It's called Marijuana.
Okay, as a coaster enthusiast, here is my take on this.
1. They are regulating something that has a lower per capita injury/fatality rate than garden hoses, bowling, driving, walking up stairs, and really just about anything.
2. Given [1] this is obviously 'look good' legislation that, as usual, totally fails to see the cause of injuries.
3. By far the biggest cause of injuries is rider error. You know, people who don't "remain seated with your hands inside the car at all times". The next biggest cause (roughly 15%) is operator error. These type of accidents usually result because the operator did something stupid (IE was walking under the track while the coaster was running.) The other major cause of accidents (almost 5%) are caused by those with preexisting conditions (asthma, heart trouble, back trouble, etc). Again, essentially rider error, as the signs warn quite clearly that those with preexisting medical conditions should not ride.
4. Even assuming g forces are a danger (I disagree, but just for the sake of argument...), NJ is looking at it in the wrong way. Based on a large body of anecdotal evidence (I've ridden 153 coasters at 52 diffirent parks, total # of rides probably close to 5000), the only thing that ever causes discomfort are those hideous over the sholder restraints (Sometimes referred to as 'horsecollars'. These restraints let your HEAD do all the stopping under any sort of lateral acceleration. Ever since Karl Bacon of Arrow Dynamics came up with the idea in the early '70's, they have been causing headaches everywhere they are installed. Luckily, some companies are seeing the light. Schwarzkopf GMBH (one of the dominant builders of early looping rides) always used simple lapbars, and those ride like a dream. Premier Rides, maker of magnetically launched rides, has recently retrofitted almost all their rides with lapbars. Those have now gone from a boxing simulator to being world class rides.
Hate to say it, but you're dead wrong on the details of the incident. The ride you're referromg to is the 'City Jet' (http://rcdb.com/installationgallery402.htm?Pictur e=2).
The accident occurred on a ride called the 'Wild Wonder', installed in 1999, and removed later that same year. After modifications to fix the design flaw, that ride now operates at Magic Springs park in Arkansas.
What basically happened was that the car slipped backwards down the hill (after two diffirent safety systems simultaneously failed...) and the two passengers were ejected as the train rounded a very tight radius turn.
As both a musician and music fan, allowing your fans to trade live show bootlegs (and explicitly allow taping of same) can do wonders. Look what it did for Phish. In 3 years they went from playing college student centers to selling out Boston Garden. Before you mod me as offtopic, lemme get around to how this relates to online. Get listed on etree.org. Get on Furthur (http://furthurnet.com), which is a program for trading complete live shows in mp3 and shorten (SHN) format. Maybe get the ball rolling by posting a couple of soundboard recordings on Furthur. Don't worry about this cannabilzing your album sales. It won't. It very well may get people to buy more. I know I've bought over 10 Phish albums since I first downloaded a Phish show off Furthur.
Ya know, I bet the Kompany is probably pissed....
Can I get an amen from the sinister minister? Great article.
#!/usr/bin/python
import urllib
obj = urllib.urlopen('http://slashdot.org')
text = obj.read()
Culitive error. Over multiple FX passes the margin of error get's larger and larger.
Most movie work is done at atleast 48bit.
Well, just for the sake of argument,
2 x T1s = ~$3000 - $4000 a month
That's 18000 - 24000 for 6 months.
Yea, I can imagine it. It would be a boring 'racing' game with poor controls, good (for 1996) graphics, and about as much replay appeal as boiled cabbage.
EMusic WAS great. After a recent server change, all of a sudden my homebrew full album downloader doesn't work. It's calling the exact URLs, but apparently their servers refuse connection for Python's URLLib. Shame. Bye Bye EMusic.com
1, How can we read the labels?
2. How hard will they be to keep track of?
3. What happends to liner notes?
Still, interesting idea. But why not make cd-sized discs that could hold 20-50 CD's worth of information? That'd be what.... 0.2 LOC? (Library of Congress)
4x4 Evolution was Dreamcast/PC/Mac interoperable like....2 years ago. This is NOT anything new.
Or just buy a Dreamcast...
A real steal...typically $50 for the system, and a controller. Games run $10-$20. Of course, if you can find theme, there are always the loki ports.
It says NOTHING about running windows. It means you need to buy the Windows version to use the linux binaries, as opposed to issuing a new CD just for linux.
Quote: The result? The SafetypeTM is the only keyboard proven in a Major University Study to virtually eliminate the high-stress postures that contribute to Repetitive Stress Injuries, such as Carpal Tunnel Syndrome.
My emphasis. This is always a big red flag. If it wasn't Podunk College, Thelma's Corner, AL, it would be named....
Compiling all my apps from source removes worries about this kinda thing ;)
I *never* run prebuilt binaries if at all possible.
The actual Adams Quote is: 'I love deadlines, especially the whooshing sound they make as they go by.' Just FYI
In the pre-copyright era, copyright really wasn't need because, by and large, copying simply wasn't possible, and when possible, was very, very, tedious.
It was posted on USENet...it MUST be true!
Could we please get a category for casemods....so those of us who think the whole thing has been done to death can filter...
BDB = Big Dumb Booster.
We did the Saturn 5 in the mid '60's with slide rules. Surely we can do much better than that these days?
Reuseable is a joke for the main compnent. The shuttle is practically rebuilt anyways.
This won't help you, and may actually hurt you, since the software company can then sue using the DCMA.
Monster in a Box
The inside story of an ingenious chess-playing machine that thrilled crowds, terrified opponents, and won like clockwork.
By Tom Standage
One autumn day in 1769, a 35-year-old civil servant was summoned to the imperial court in Vienna to witness a magic show. Wolfgang von Kempelen - well versed in physics, mechanics, and hydraulics - was a trusted servant of Maria Theresa, the empress of Austria-Hungary. She had invited him in order to see what a scientific man would make of the magician's tricks. The event was to change the course of Kempelen's life.
For he was so unimpressed by the performance that, once it was over, Kempelen made an uncharacteristic and audacious claim. In front of the whole court, he declared that he could do better. Maria Theresa could hardly allow such a boast to pass without comment. Very well, she said. Excusing Kempelen from his official duties for six months, the empress challenged him to keep his word. Kempelen agreed not to return to the court until he was ready to stage a performance of his own.
He did not disappoint. In the spring of 1770, Kempelen reappeared before the empress and unveiled an extraordinary machine: a life-size mannequin seated behind a cabinet. The figure was made of carved wood and wore an ermine-trimmed robe, loose trousers, and a turban. The wooden box was 4 feet long, 2.5 feet deep, and 3 feet high, and rested on four brass casters. This meant the whole contraption could be moved around and rotated freely, so that it could be viewed easily from every angle. The front of the cabinet was divided into three doors of equal width, with a long drawer along the bottom. The wooden figure sat with its right arm extended, resting on the cabinet top, and its eyes stared down at a large chessboard directly in front of it. Its left hand held a long Turkish pipe, as though it had just finished smoking.
Stepping forward to address the audience, Kempelen announced that he had built a machine the likes of which had never been seen: an automaton, or mechanical toy, capable of playing chess. A skeptical murmur passed through the crowd. Kempelen explained that before demonstrating his invention, he would display its inner workings. He reached into his pocket and produced a set of keys, one of which he used to unlock the leftmost door on the front of the cabinet. Kempelen opened it to reveal an elaborate mechanism of densely packed wheels, cogs, levers, and clockwork machinery, including a large horizontal cylinder with a complex configuration of protruding studs, similar to that found in a musical box. As the audience scrutinized these workings, Kempelen opened another door directly behind the machinery and held a burning candle so that its flickering light was visible to spectators through the intricate clockwork. He then closed and locked the rear door.
Kempelen returned to the front, where he pulled out the long drawer to reveal a set of chess pieces in red and white ivory; he placed these on the top of the cabinet. Next, he unlocked and opened the two remaining doors in the front to reveal the main compartment, which contained only a red cushion, a small wooden casket, and a board marked with gold letters. Kempelen placed these items on a small table near the automaton.
Leaving all the doors and the drawer open, Kempelen rotated the automaton so that its back was to the crowd. Lifting up its robe, he revealed a small door in the figure's left thigh and one in its back, both of which opened to show more clockwork machinery. Kempelen then closed all the doors and the drawer, replaced the robe, and returned his contraption to its original position facing the onlookers. He slid the cushion beneath the figure's left elbow, removed the long pipe from its left hand, put the chess pieces on the appropriate squares, and reached inside the cabinet to make a final adjustment to the machinery. Finally, he placed two candelabras on top of the cabinet to illuminate the board.
Kempelen announced that the automaton was ready to play chess against anyone prepared to challenge it, and recruited a volunteer - a courtier named Count Cobenzl - from the audience. Kempelen explained that his mechanical man would play the white pieces and have the first move, that moves could not be taken back once made, and that it was important to place the pieces exactly on the center of the squares, so that the automaton would be able to grasp them correctly. The count nodded. Kempelen then inserted a large key into an aperture in the cabinet and wound up the clockwork mechanism with a loud ratcheting sound.
Once Kempelen stopped turning the key there was an agonizing silence. Then, after a brief pause, the sound of whirring and grinding clockwork could be heard coming from inside. The carved figure slowly turned its head from side to side, as though surveying the board. To the utter astonishment of the audience, the mechanical man then lurched to life, reaching out its left arm and moving one of its chessmen forward. The room cried out in amazement. The game had begun.
The sight of a machine playing chess was astounding enough, but the Turk, as it came to be known, also proved to be a formidable opponent. Count Cobenzl was swiftly defeated; the automaton was a fast, aggressive player, and subsequently proved to be capable of beating most people within half an hour. Kempelen, it seemed, had built a mechanical man whose clockwork mind could outthink most humans.
The Turk's sensational performance delighted the empress. Kempelen and his automaton made many more appearances before the royal family, government ministers of Austria-Hungary and of foreign countries, and other eminent visitors to the court. His extraordinary creation became the talk of Vienna, and the news of its triumphs quickly spread throughout Europe.
After the empress died, her son, Joseph II, commanded Kempelen to take the Turk on a tour of the courts of Europe. The inventor and his automaton went on to visit France, England, the Netherlands, and Germany. In Paris, the Turk defeated Benjamin Franklin, who, among his many other interests, was a chess fanatic. It suffered a rare defeat at the hands of a Frenchman known as Philidor, widely regarded as the finest player in Europe. Members of the Académie des Sciences, one of the world's foremost scientific societies, scrutinized the Turk, but they were no more able to fathom the secret of its operation than anyone else.
Wherever it went, the Turk inspired a torrent of pamphlets, newspaper articles, and books debating how it worked. Was it operated by a hidden chess-playing monkey? Was a child, a dwarf, or a legless war veteran lurking inside the cabinet? It seemed impossible; one eyewitness flatly declared that there was "no possibility of its concealing anything the size of my hat." Another school of thought suggested that magnetism, which was still only dimly understood, was involved. Perhaps, went the theory, Kempelen directed his contraption from a distance by moving a magnet in his pocket. Yet another explanation proposed that it was controlled by an offstage operator tugging on very thin wires. Or perhaps Kempelen was pushing tiny buttons, built into the Turk's cabinet, to direct its moves. There were also plenty of observers prepared to accept the automaton at face value as a genuine thinking machine.
After Kempelen's death, the Turk was bought by Johann Maelzel, a maker of musical automata who is also remembered as the inventor of the metronome (though he actually stole the design from someone else). Under Maelzel's ownership, the Turk toured Europe for many years. In 1809, it played its most famous game, against Napoléon Bonaparte, who attempted to fool it by making deliberately incorrect moves. After three such tries, the Turk ended the game in protest by sweeping its arm over the chessboard, knocking over all the pieces - to Napoléon's delight. Charles Babbage, the pioneer of the mechanical computer, was another famous opponent; he lost two games to the Turk. Babbage was certain it was under human control, though he was not sure how. But he started to wonder whether a genuine chess-playing machine could, in fact, be constructed.
Deeply in debt, Maelzel fled to America in 1825, taking the Turk with him. The mechanical man made regular appearances in New York, Boston, and Philadelphia, then toured the south and even went to Havana. A 26-year-old Edgar Allan Poe encountered the Turk in December 1835 in Richmond, Virginia. He concluded that it was controlled by someone hiding inside the cabinet, and the following year published an account of how he believed the operator remained hidden. The style of Poe's prose foreshadowed his later mystery and detective stories. Eventually, interest in the Turk waned, and it spent its last days in a museum in Philadelphia, where it was destroyed in a fire on July 5, 1854. After 85 years and countless chess games, the Turk's spectacular career was over.
A fast, aggressive player, "the Turk" beat most people within half an hour. Its victims included Ben Franklin and, in a dramatic showdown, Napoléon Bonaparte.
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. That so many people - even those who supposedly had scientific backgrounds - were taken in is not as surprising as it might seem, however. The Turk's debut occurred at the start of the industrial revolution, as the relationship between men and machines was being redefined; it was a time when new technology seemed to offer boundless possibilities. Why not a thinking, chess-playing machine?
That's what the great player Philidor seems to have thought, despite his victory against the Turk in the summer of 1783. That same summer saw the first public demonstration of a hot air balloon, by the Montgolfier brothers, in the south of France. The event caused a sensation in Paris and contributed to an intellectual climate in which people believed anything was possible.
The fabulous lineup of clockwork animals and mechanical men on show in Europe at the time also fostered the idea that the Turk might, after all, be genuine. From their origins as glorified clocks, automata had grown steadily more complex throughout the 18th century. One popular type was the mechanical picture - a painting with moving parts driven by an elaborate mechanism hidden behind or within the frame. Windup ornaments that dispensed cutlery, spices, water, and wine sat on the tables of many well-to-do families; mechanical dancers, animals, and singing birds decorated music boxes and snuff cases. An Englishman named James Cox made an 8-foot-high mechanical elephant encrusted with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and pearls.
Other famous automata included a writer, a draftsman, and a harpsichord player constructed by Henri-Louis Jaquet-Droz, a member of a Swiss family of clockmakers. He programmed them to write, draw, and play music using irregularly shaped disks, called cams, threaded on to a spindle. As the spindle rotated, spring-loaded levers resting on the cams moved up and down and controlled the motion of the automaton's various parts by pushing and pulling on connecting rods. By paying meticulous attention to the shapes of the various cams, it was possible to program these figures to make coordinated movements of extraordinary grace and subtlety. Cams can now be found in all kinds of machinery; they are, for example, used to synchronize the opening and closing of valves in internal combustion engines.
The most famous automata of all were built by a Frenchman named Jacques de Vaucanson. In 1737, he displayed a mechanical flute player in Paris to great acclaim and allowed it to be scrutinized by members of the Académie des Sciences, in order to dispel any question of trickery. Juvigny, a French politician, wrote that "at first many people would not believe that the sounds were produced by the flute which the automaton was holding... The most incredulous, however, were soon convinced that the automaton was in fact blowing the flute, and that the breath coming from his lips made it play and that the movement of his fingers determined the different notes."
Next, Vaucanson built a boy who played a drum with one hand and a pipe held by the other; the sound of the pipe was even more dependent on the air pressure, the tonguing, and the position of the mechanical figure's fingers than the flute player's music was. But it was Vaucanson's third automaton that became his most famous. He decided to imitate an animal; the result, Vaucanson explained in a letter to a contemporary, was "an artificial duck made of gilded copper that drinks, eats, quacks, splashes about on the water, and digests his food like a living duck." It could stretch out its neck, take grain from a spectator's hand, and then swallow, digest, and excrete it. Its wings could flap and were anatomically exact copies of real ones, with each bone rendered in metal and adorned with a few feathers. While spectators were struck by how lifelike it appeared, Vaucanson was chiefly interested in the duck's innards, which he left exposed to view. The insides imitated the digestive process by dissolving grain in an artificial stomach, from where it was passed along a flexible tube and excreted. This involved a significant technological development, since it was the first time a tube had been made of India rubber, or caoutchouc. Such tubing proved to have many other uses.
Vaucanson became a celebrity; Voltaire described him as a "rival to Prometheus." Having built machines that could mimic respiration and digestion, Vaucanson made no secret of his dream of building an artificial man. He hoped it would be possible to use it "to perform experiments on animal functions, and thence to gather inductions to know the different states of health of men so as to remedy their ills."
In 1741, Vaucanson accepted a lucrative offer from the government to apply his mechanical ingenuity to the modernization of the French weaving industry. He drew up elaborate plans to transform manufacturing methods and work practices. But his scheme was abandoned when the silk workers of Lyons, who were to try out his new ideas, complained that they would be herded into factories and forced to act as mere drudges on a production line. Wary of becoming human parts in what would be, in effect, a huge automaton, they rioted in the streets, forcing Vaucanson to flee for his life. He returned to Paris and took a low-profile job as the official examiner of new mechanical inventions for the Académie des Sciences.
Kempelen was familiar with Vaucanson's work and shared his interest in building machines that could imitate human faculties. (In addition to creating the Turk, Kempelen spent many years researching the mechanism of speech, and in the 1770s he produced the first speech synthesizers capable of articulating entire sentences.) He must have been aware that most observers found Vaucanson's constructions incomprehensibly complicated. With the introduction of the steam engine and the power loom across Europe, there seemed to be no limit to the potential of mechanical technology. The Turk cleverly exploited this perception.
After two games against the Turk, Charles Babbage began to sketch out plans for his own thinking machine. This was the genesis of the first mechanical computer.
There are obvious similarities to the rise of the computer era in modern times. The creations of Vaucanson, Kempelen, and their contemporaries are arguably the ancestors of almost all modern machinery; automata occupied the same intersection of technology, entertainment, and commerce that computers do today. Then, as now, many people were ambivalent about the new machines. On one hand, they were fascinated - public exhibitions of automata were wildly popular in London and Paris during the 18th century - but they were also concerned that humans might end up being superseded. Just as science fiction movies of the 1960s featured evil robots and computers, 18th-century books and plays explored the dramatic possibilities of thinking machines, or of people concealed inside boxes and pretending to be machines. While many of these stories were straightforward comedies or romances, a darker mood was also abroad: The Turk's tour of Europe coincided with the Luddite riots and Mary Shelley's publication of Frankenstein.
In the end, the Turk was taken seriously because it provided a starting point for discussion of the promise - and limits - of machinery. Even scientific men who could see through the hoax enjoyed the debate spurred by the Turk. Robert Willis, a young Englishman who in 1821 published one of many books attempting to explain how the Turk worked, founded his argument on the assumption that a chess-playing machine was simply impossible. "The phenomena of the chess player are inconsistent with the effects of mere mechanism," he wrote, "for however great and surprising the powers of mechanism may be, the movements which spring from it are necessarily limited and uniform. It cannot usurp and exercise the faculties of mind; it cannot be made to vary its operations, so as to meet the ever-varying circumstances of a game of chess." Automata might be able to do clever things, he conceded, but they could not respond to events. They could not be, to use the modern term, interactive.
Even though Charles Babbage agreed with Willis that the Turk was a hoax, his experience with it led him to exactly the opposite conclusion about machine intelligence. Babbage had long toyed with the idea of building an automaton that could perform mathematical operations, and in 1821, shortly after playing his two games against the Turk, he sketched out his first plans for such a machine. This was the genesis of Babbage's first mechanical computer, the Difference Engine. Although he toiled for many years and spent an enormous amount of money - much of it provided by the British government - Babbage never completed it. One reason was that halfway through construction, Babbage dreamed up an even more ambitious machine: the Analytical Engine, which would be capable of far more complex calculations. He lost interest in the Difference Engine but was then unable to raise funds for his new design. Even so, Babbage's insight into the Analytical Engine's theoretical capabilities prefigured many elements of modern computer science. In particular, he argued that a suitably powerful mechanical engine would be able to play games of skill such as ticktacktoe, checkers, and chess. He even sketched out a rough algorithm for playing board games with movable pieces, including chess - the first time that anyone had attempted to devise one. Babbage concluded that, in theory at least, there was no reason why a genuine mechanical chess player could not be built, though its cost and size would make the idea impractical.
By the mid-19th century, public understanding of what mechanical technology could and could not do was on a firmer footing than at the time of the Turk's debut, and most people had come to regard chess-playing machines as improbable. With the rise of the telegraph - a revolutionary new form of communication - electrical devices began to eclipse mechanical ones as the embodiment of the technological zeitgeist. Little wonder that interest in the Turk declined. A few years after its fiery demise, nobody was terribly surprised when the truth emerged: The chess player had indeed been controlled by a concealed operator using a clever system of folding partitions to remain hidden while the automaton's interior was open to view.
The Turk is gone, but not quite forgotten. It is fondly remembered by historians of magic, chess enthusiasts, and, perhaps surprisingly, computer scientists. Indeed, Kempelen's contraption has taken on a new significance since the invention of the digital computer. Artificial intelligence researchers started writing chess-playing programs in the 1940s, showing just how prescient Kempelen had been in suggesting that the game was a good first step for machine intelligence. And with its setup of a man pretending to be a machine, the Turk anticipated the standard test proposed by British scientist Alan Turing in 1950: A device can be deemed intelligent if it can pass for a human in a written question-and-answer session.
Yet the most fundamental reason for the Turk's enduring popularity has only recently become apparent, following the construction of a replica by John Gaughan, a magician based in Los Angeles. Like Kempelen and Maelzel before him, Gaughan opens and closes the doors of his creation to reveal its empty interior; his Turk then springs into life. Even if you know how it works, the illusion is remarkably compelling. Ultimately, the original Turk's success depended on its spectators' deep-seated desire to be deceived. In more ways than one, Kempelen's chess-playing machine was an illusion that directly exploited the faculties of the human mind.
Read a Sample Chapter of
THE TURK: The Life and Times of the Famous Eighteenth-Century Chess-Playing Machine
C H A P T E R O N E
The Queen's Gambit Accepted
The Queen's Gambit (D4 D5 C4): An opening
in which White attempts to sacrifice his queen's
bishop's pawn to accelerate the development of
his position. Black accepts the gambit by taking
the offered pawn.
You seek for knowledge and wisdom as I once
did; and I ardently hope that the gratification of
your wishes may not be a serpent to sting you, as mine has been.
--Mary Shelley, Frankenstein (1818)
Automata are the forgotten ancestors of almost all modern technology. From computers to compact-disc players, railway engines to robots, the origins of today's machines can be traced back to the elaborate mechanical toys that flourished in the eighteenth century. As the first complex machines produced by man, automata represented a proving ground for technology that would later be harnessed in the industrial revolution. But their original uses were rather less utilitarian. Automata were the playthings of royalty, both as a form of entertainment in palaces and courts across Europe and as gifts sent from one ruling family to another. As well as being a source of amusement, automata provided a showcase for each nation's scientific prowess, since they embodied what was, at the time, the absolute cutting edge of new technology. As a result, automata had a far greater social and cultural importance than their outward appearance as mere toys might suggest.
The first automata were essentially scaled-down versions of the elaborate mechanical clocks that adorned cathedrals across Europe from medieval times. As well as displaying the time, these clocks often had astronomical features (such as the phase of the moon) and, in some cases, entire mechanical theaters that sprang to life on particular occasions. A typical configuration involved figures of the Madonna and Child, who would appear through a doorway on specific feast days as the clock struck the hour. They would be followed by figures representing the three kings, shepherds, and so on, all of whom would genuflect before the Madonna, present their gifts, and then disappear through another door. A good example can still be seen today on the clock tower of St. Mark's in Venice. Municipal clocks in town squares subsequently adapted this formula but replaced the religious figures with kings, knights, trumpeters, birds, and other animals. These clocks provided the inspiration for smaller and increasingly elaborate automata that clockmakers sold to rich customers. As these devices became more complicated, their time-keeping function became less important, and automata became first and foremost mechanical amusements in the form of mechanical theaters or moving scenes.
One popular kind of automaton was the mechanical picture, a painting with moving parts driven by an elaborate clockwork mechanism hidden behind or within the frame. Another type of automaton, also intended as a conversation piece, took the form of a table ornament. Such devices could hold cutlery, napkins, and spices, had spouts to dispense wine or water, were decorated with moving figures or animals, and often incorporated a clock. A particularly fine example, made for Emperor Rudolph II by Hans Schlottheim, a German automaton maker, can be seen today in the British Museum.
Another influence on the design of automata was the long tradition of imitating nature through the construction of mechanical animals. The Italian artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci, for example, designed a flying machine modeled on a bird and is said to have made a mechanical lion. His fifteenth-century German contemporary, Johann Müller, known as "Regiomontanus," presented Emperor Maximilian with an iron fly and a mechanical eagle, which is reputed to have escorted the emperor to the city gates of Nuremberg, though exactly how is unclear. Even less plausible is the brass fly constructed by Bishop Virgilius of Naples. It supposedly chased all the real flies from the city, which remained free of flies for eight years.
Inspired by such tales, makers of automata enjoyed the challenge of making machines that were capable of moving in a lifelike manner. There were music boxes and snuffboxes out of which singing birds or dancing figures appeared, and innumerable mechanical animals. One eighteenth-century automaton-maker, an Englishman named James Cox, made an eight-foot-high mechanical elephant encrusted with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and pearls. Cox was renowned for his automata and mechanical clocks, many of which were sold or sent as gifts to China by the East India Company. His other creations included a mechanical tiger, a peacock, and a swan.
Sometimes automata imitated living things a little too credibly, as was the case with a supposed automaton harpsichord player that made an appearance at the court of the French king Louis XV during the 1730s and enchanted listeners with its musical ability. The king insisted on being shown the mechanism that could play in such a charming and lifelike manner, whereupon a five-year-old girl was found concealed inside the machine.
Other famous (but genuine) automata included the writer, draftsman, and harpsichord player constructed by Henri-Louis Jaquet-Droz, a member of a Swiss family of clockmakers. The movements of these automata, which could write, draw, and play music respectively, were programmed using irregularly shaped disks, called cams, threaded onto a spindle. As the spindle rotated, spring-loaded levers resting on the cams moved up and down, and controlled the motion of the automaton's various parts by pushing and pulling on connecting rods. By paying meticulous attention to the shapes of the various cams, one could program an automaton to make coordinated, lifelike movements of extraordinary grace and subtlety. Similar writing automata were built in the 1750s for Maria Theresa, empress of Austria- Hungary, by Friedrich von Knauss, an Austrian inventor who is also credited with the invention of the typewriter.
Since only the very rich could afford to buy their extravagant contraptions, makers of automata moved in elevated circles and often ended up in the direct employ of kings, queens, and emperors. Building automata thus provided a good way for serious-minded clockmakers, engineers, or scientists seeking patronage to demonstrate their abilities and establish reputations for themselves; tinkering with mechanical toys could lead to both fame and fortune. Perhaps the best example is provided by the Frenchman Jacques de Vaucanson, whose inventions dazzled Europe in the mid- eighteenth century, and whose renown as an automaton maker enabled him to move effortlessly between the worlds of entertainment, industry, and science.
Vaucanson was born in 1709, the youngest of ten children, and studied theology at the Jesuit college in Grenoble with a view to becoming a monk. He also enjoyed building mechanical toys, and he soon found that this was incompatible with his religious vocation. According to one story, he built tiny flying toys in the form of angels, which angered his superiors; another tale suggests that it was a table automaton that got Vaucanson into trouble with a senior official of his religious order. In any case, forced to choose between his religious calling and his enthusiasm for elaborate machinery, he renounced the religious life and decided instead to devote himself to building automata.
Like other automaton makers, Vaucanson was particularly interested in building machines capable of imitating the natural processes of living beings, including respiration, digestion, and the circulation of the blood. His ultimate goal was to build an artificial man. But Vaucanson soon realized that in order to pursue this goal, he would first have to put his talents to commercial use and raise money "by producing some machines that could excite public curiosity." Displays of automata were becoming increasingly popular, particularly in Paris and London, where they provided an opportunity for the public to witness a variety of elaborate machinery that they would never have been able to afford to buy for themselves.
The automaton that first brought Vaucanson to public attention took the form of a flute player. One day in 1735, while walking through some public gardens in Paris, he saw a statue of a boy holding a flute to his lips and was inspired to build a moving statue that could actually play melodies. The primary purpose of the automaton was to enable Vaucanson to investigate the human respiratory system, and to this end he furnished it with artificial lungs, windpipe, and mouth, to which it held its flute. The lungs consisted of three sets of bellows, driven by a rotating crankshaft, to ensure a constant flow of air at low, medium, and high pressure. A set of valves adjusted the amount of air at each pressure that was allowed into the windpipe, and another valve in the mouth regulated the airflow, performing the function of the tongue. The movements of these valves, together with those of the fingers and the lips, were controlled by a set of spring-loaded levers whose ends rested on the surface of a rotating drum. The surface of the drum was covered with small studs; as the ends of the levers passed over these studs, they rose and fell, causing the automaton to move its fingers and lips accordingly. This meant that every aspect of the automaton's complex operation could be programmed in advance by inserting a suitable configuration of studs into the surface of the drum. The automaton could thus be made to play intricate melodies and mimic almost all of the subtleties of a human flute player's breathing and musical expression.
Vaucanson put his flute player on public display in Paris in October 1737, and it was an immediate success. Mindful of the false automaton that had deceived the court of Louis XV, Vaucanson subsequently allowed his flute player to be scrutinized by members of the Academy of Sciences in Paris, one the world's leading scientific societies, to dispel any question of trickery. One account of the event written by Juvigny, a French politician, recorded that "at first many people would not believe that the sounds were produced by the flute which the automaton was holding. These people believed that the sounds must come from an organ enclosed in the body of the figure. The most incredulous, however, were soon convinced that the automaton was in fact blowing the flute, and that the breath coming from his lips made it play and that the movement of his fingers determined the different notes. The machine was submitted to the most minute examination and to the strictest tests. The spectators were permitted to see even the innermost springs and to follow their movements." Vaucanson's flute player was thus proven to be an entirely genuine automaton. What the false automaton had accomplished through trickery, Vaucanson had achieved through a combination of ingenuity and the latest in mechanical technology.
Within a few months he had completed a second automaton, this time of a boy playing a pipe with one hand and a drum with the other. With only one hand to play the three-holed pipe, the sound it produced was far more dependent on the air pressure, the tonguing, and the position of the automaton's fingers. It thus presented a further challenge to Vaucanson's ability to mimic human subtleties. But it was Vaucanson's third automaton, a model of the digestive system, that was to become his most famous creation. Instead of building it in the form of a person, Vaucanson decided to imitate an animal and built a mechanical duck.
He described this automaton in a letter to a contemporary as "an artificial duck made of gilded copper that drinks, eats, quacks, splashes about on the water, and digests his food like a living duck." The duck could stretch out its neck, take grain from a spectator's hand, and then swallow, digest, and excrete it. The duck's wings were anatomically exact copies of real wings, with each bone rendered in metal and adorned with a few feathers. The duck could even flap its wings and create a gentle breeze. But while spectators were chiefly struck by the extraordinarily lifelike nature of the duck, Vaucanson was chiefly interested in its innards, which he left exposed to view. The duck's insides imitated the digestive process by dissolving the grain in an artificial stomach, from where it was passed along tubes and excreted. In the process of building this automaton, Vaucanson pioneered the development of flexible rubber tubing.
In common with Vaucanson's other automata, the duck was mounted on a wooden pedestal, and its mechanism was powered by a falling weight, in the same way as a grandfather clock. The weight was suspended on a cord, which was wrapped around a large drum. As the weight fell, it turned the drum, thus directing the duck's movements through an elaborate system of cams and levers. In the words of Juvigny, "During the time that this artificial animal was eating grain from someone's hand, drinking and splashing in the water brought to him in a vase, passing his excrements, flapping and spreading his wings and imitating all the movements of a living duck, everybody was allowed to look inside the pedestal. In this were all the wheels, all the levers, and all the wires communicating through the animal's legs with the different parts of his body and this was likewise open to view. As with the fluteplayer, a weight was the one and only source of power to set the whole thing in motion and keep it moving."
Such was the acclaim that greeted these extraordinary machines--Voltaire described their inventor as "bold Vaucanson, rival to Prometheus"--that Vaucanson allowed them to go on a tour of the courts of Europe, as ambassadors for French ingenuity and scientific advancement. Vaucanson was made a member of the Academy of Sciences in Paris; King Frederick II of Prussia offered him a job with a generous salary of 12,000 livres; he was even given the opportunity by Louis XV of France to go on an expedition to Guiana in order to further the development of his new rubber tubing.
However, Vaucanson decided to stay in France and pursue his goal of building an artificial man. Once it was completed, he hoped to use this automaton "to perform experiments on animal functions, and thence to gather inductions to know the different states of health of men so as to remedy their ills." But this ambitious project quickly stalled, so in 1741 Vaucanson accepted the offer of the lucrative government post of inspector of manufactures, with responsibility for applying his mechanical ingenuity to the modernization of the French weaving industry. He drew up elaborate plans to transform manufacturing methods and work practices. But his reorganization plans were abandoned when the silk workers of the city of Lyons, who were to try out his new ideas, heard of his scheme and complained that they would be herded into factories and forced to act as mere drudges on a production line. Wary of becoming human parts in what would be, in effect, a huge automaton, they rioted in the streets, forcing Vaucanson to disguise himself as a monk and flee for his life.
Vaucanson returned to Paris, where he decided to withdraw from the limelight. In 1743, he sold his trio of automata to a consortium of businessmen from Lyons, who showcased them at the Haymarket theater in London and subsequently displayed them across Europe. Vaucanson was appointed official examiner of new machine inventions at the Academy of Sciences in Paris and spent his remaining years working on many other inventions, including a number of improvements to machine tools such as lathes, milling machines, and drills. He also devised a machine to manufacture an endless chain and spent many years working on a power loom that could weave silk automatically, without the need for human intervention. With this machine, Vaucanson declared, "a horse, an ox or an ass can make cloth more beautiful and much more perfect than the most able silkworkers . . . each machine makes each day as much material as the best worker, when he is not wasting time." But his weaving machine never got past the experimental stage and was not adopted by the weaving industry. Vaucanson never built his artificial man either. He was, however, responsible for causing a surge in public interest in automata. His work paved the way for many subsequent inventions and inspired other automaton makers--including Wolfgang von Kempelen.
As one of Maria Theresa's senior officials, Wolfgang von Kempelen would have seen a procession of automata and other scientific amusements being presented to the empress at her court in Vienna, including musical automata, mechanical animals, and other contraptions. But he was no ordinary observer, for he had taught himself the principles of physics, mechanics, and hydraulics, even though he had come to the subject relatively late in life. This meant he was able to appreciate how the various automata worked, and to observe which ones were regarded as most impressive by spectators. At some point, he started to hatch a plan for an automaton of his own.
As a wealthy civil servant, Kempelen was an unlikely automaton maker; it seems he was simply looking for a challenge beyond the humdrum routine of his day-to-day duties. For although he was doing well in his career, life at the court was insufficiently stimulating to someone with such a wide range of interests.
Born in 1734, as a young man Kempelen had studied philosophy and law in Vienna. He then made an artistic pilgrimage to Italy before being formally introduced to the Viennese court by his father, Engelbert, a retired customs officer, in 1755. A strikingly handsome twenty-one-year-old who spoke several languages, Kempelen made an immediate impression. He was given the important task of translating the Hungarian civil code from Latin into German, which Maria Theresa had made the official language throughout her newly united kingdom of Austria-Hungary. Kempelen retired to his living quarters and completed the work in a few days. His translation was hailed as a masterpiece; it seemed extraordinary that he could have produced so flawless a translation of such a complex text in so little time. Kempelen was soon appointed counselor to the imperial court, with a salary three times what his father had earned. On the official document confirming his appointment, Maria Theresa wrote, "The Hungarian court will benefit greatly from young Mr. Kempelen."
Kempelen was indeed a valuable asset to the court: he was hardworking and conscientious in his professional capacity, while being charming and gregarious in person. In September 1757, with his fortunes rising fast, Kempelen married a lady-in-waiting at the court, and soon afterward he was promoted further. But Kempelen's wife, Franciscka, died suddenly a few weeks later. Shocked and grief-stricken, Kempelen responded by immersing himself in his hobby: scientific investigation. As a wealthy man, he was able to afford the expensive materials needed to equip his own workshop, where he devoted his spare time to research and experimentation. He swiftly collected an assortment of the latest scientific equipment and all the wood- and metal- working tools of a joiner, a locksmith, and a watchmaker. Adjoining his workshop was his study, which was lined with books, antiques, and engravings. One of Kempelen's friends wrote of him that "his predominant passion is invention, in which he employs almost every moment which the duties of his situation leave at his disposal."
As his interest in science and mechanics grew, Kempelen continued to prosper at the court. In 1758 he was appointed controller of the imperial salt mines in Transylvania, and he was promoted to director of the mines in 1766, by which time he had also remarried. He now felt confident enough to put his scientific knowledge into practice, and he devised a system of pumps to drain the mines when they became flooded with water. Following the success of this project, he was asked to design the waterworks for the castle in his hometown of Pressburg, the capital of Hungary, a few miles to the east of Vienna. (Pressburg was called Poszony in Hungarian and is now the Slovakian town of Bratislava.)
In 1768 Kempelen was given the challenging task of coordinating the settlement of the mountainous Banat province of Hungary. While in Banat he solved a local mystery, freeing several wrongly imprisoned men from jail. He also planned villages and designed houses, and over the next three years thousands of families settled in the region. During this time Kempelen spent a lot of time in Banat but made frequent visits to Vienna to report back on his progress. It was on one of these visits, in the autumn of 1769, that he was invited by Maria Theresa to attend the scientific conjuring show being presented to the court that evening by a visiting Frenchman named Pelletier.
Maria Theresa was particularly interested in science and had an unusually enlightened attitude toward it for her time. Soon after coming to the throne she had, for example, taken a strong line against the overzealous persecution of people accused of being vampires or witches. On one occasion she pardoned a man who had been found guilty of witchcraft and was due to be beheaded, declaring, "Witches can only be found where there is ignorance. This man is no more capable of witchcraft than I." She was also an advocate of the practice of inoculation against smallpox. Following an outbreak of the disease in Vienna in 1767 that claimed the lives of several members of her own family, the empress had her own sons inoculated and subsequently paid for the inoculation of dozens of poor children.
The empress was aware of Kempelen's growing reputation in scientific circles and hoped he would be able to explain to her how Pelletier's conjuring tricks worked. Kempelen was known to be good at explaining technical matters when asked to do so, without being a bore. "It is very rare to hear him speak of mechanism, notwithstanding it is his dominant passion," noted one of his friends, who praised the "astonishing fluency" of Kempelen's explanations "if the conversation be led to this subject." Kempelen agreed to do his best to explain the conjurer's tricks to the empress and took a seat near her in the audience. Pelletier, who is thought to have been a member of the prestigious Academy of Sciences in Paris, finished preparing his equipment and indicated that he was ready to begin. Maria Theresa nodded, and the performance began.
The exact nature of the "magnetic games" performed by Pelletier is uncertain. But his routine probably had as much in common with a scientific lecture as with a modern conjuring show. It is likely that there would have been chemical reactions, explosions, demonstrations of magnetism, and a number of tricks involving automata. Mixing scientific demonstrations and automata with more traditional, old- fangled conjuring would have given the whole performance a vital veneer of scientific respectability. At the time, conjurors were at pains to stress that their tricks relied on "natural" (or "white") magic and thus did not contravene the divine laws of nature, unlike "supernatural" (or "black") magic, which was thought to involve the intervention of the devil.
Throughout the performance Kempelen and the empress chatted, Kempelen drawing on his scientific knowledge to explain how the tricks worked. He was not at all impressed by what he saw. Indeed, he seems to have been rather irritated by the Frenchman's sneering and condescending tone, with its implication that it was the role of France to instruct the other nations of Europe in scientific matters. Once the show was over, Maria Theresa asked Kempelen, in his capacity as a scientific expert, his opinion of the performance. To the surprise of everyone present, Kempelen calmly responded that he believed himself capable of constructing a machine, the effect of which would be much more surprising, and the deception far more complete, than anything the empress had just witnessed.
Kempelen was known as a dependable and serious person, so this impetuous claim seemed entirely out of character and was greeted with laughter. But Kempelen was not joking. The empress could hardly allow such a boast to pass without comment, particularly since the matter was now one of national pride. Excusing him from his official duties in Banat and Vienna for six months, she challenged Kempelen to deliver on his promise and to build an automaton more impressive than anything that had been seen in any of the courts of Europe. Kempelen agreed not to return until he was ready to stage a performance of his own.
He went back to his home in Pressburg, where he lived with his second wife, Anna Maria, and their young daughter, Theresa. Abandoning his usual duties, he retreated to his workshop, where he spent the next few months fashioning wood, brass, and clockwork machinery into the chessplaying automaton that would unexpectedly ensure his place in history. By the end of the allotted six months, Kempelen was ready to transport his automaton to Vienna for its debut. By keeping his word, outdoing Pelletier, and impressing the empress, he could expect to be well rewarded. But things did not turn out quite as Kempelen imagined.