The Mechanical Turk

Summary

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Hoax! – "The Mechanical Turk"

(Aired December 22, 2025 – iHeartMedia)

Episode Theme & Purpose (03:12)

In this episode, hosts Dana Schwartz and Lizzy Logan explore the legendary 18th-century hoax known as The Mechanical Turk—a supposed chess-playing automaton that fooled courts, scientists, and the general public across Europe and America for decades. The episode not only unpacks how this elaborate ruse worked but also delves into the philosophical and technological implications of "machine intelligence," faith in technology, and why humans want to believe in the impossible.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Setting the Stage: The Allure of Automatons

(04:47–11:48)

• Chess as a Backdrop:
  Neither host claims chess mastery, emphasizing accessibility:
  “I like playing chess…I love doing, like, tutorials and puzzles online. But I'm not good at chess at all because I'm too impatient. I just like moving the pieces.” (Dana, 03:47)

• The Age of Automatons:
  The 1700s see a boom in mechanical marvels for the nobility, blending engineering with spectacle.

  • Automatons like Jacques de Vaucanson’s flute player and his “digesting duck” drive public fascination and scientific advancement—even inspiring inventions like flexible tubing.
  • Dana: “People are doing weird little interesting things and it is progress…a lot of things are made by people, like, fucking around.” (11:41)

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2. Meet Wolfgang von Kempelen & The Birth of the Hoax

(11:48–17:58)

• The Inventor:
  Kempelen, a charming bureaucrat and engineer, becoming an imperial favorite due to his intellect and technical curiosity.
• Genesis of the Turk:
  Prompted by courtly rivalry and national pride to outdo a French illusionist, Kempelen promises to create something “far better” (16:17), and is granted time off his bureaucratic work to do so.
  • “Babe Ruth calling a shot. Kennedy being like, we're gonna go to the moon…” (Lizzy, 16:17)
• Introducing The Turk (1770):
  A life-size figure in Ottoman garb at a chessboard; the performer opens the cabinet doors to show off its intricate machinery, appearing to rule out trickery. The spectacle is as much about performance as technology.

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3. Mechanics & Performance: How the Hoax Worked

(19:36–26:12)

• Presentation Prowess:
  Kempelen’s act combines showmanship and clever misdirection. He’s careful to open compartments, shine candles through, and let people inspect the “automaton,” even performing auxiliary tricks (like the Knight’s Tour) and mimicking speech, before quickly retiring the latter.

  • “This is like literally what magicians do before they like saw a lady in half.” (Lizzy, 22:56)

• Immediate Impact:
  The Turk impresses Austrian royalty and intellectuals, generating widespread debate and speculation—could a machine really think and play chess?

  • “It’s not just a magic trick. It's also like, can you beat this robot in chess? There's a competition element.” (Lizzy, 26:24)

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4. The Legend Travels: Fame, Rumors, and More Hoaxes

(27:10–44:41)

• The European Tour & Famous Opponents:
  The Mechanical Turk enthralls courts from Paris to London. It beats most challengers (both elite players and luminaries like Benjamin Franklin), loses to a few and always stirs debate.

  • “Philidor plays the Turk. Philidor does win. But he later says it was a really hard time. And he says that it was pretty terrifying.” (Dana, 38:22)

• Proliferation of Theories:
  Journalists, engineers, and even famed writers like Edgar Allan Poe (73:32) try and fail to fully explain how it works. The most persistent theory—a child or small adult hidden inside, possibly manipulating the arm via a mirror and magnets. However, discrepancies in measurements and clever cabinet construction stymie definitive proof for decades.

  • “These people have thought a lot about what the mind can and cannot do.” (Lizzy, 61:36)

• Unexpected Consequences:
  The Turk inspires true technical innovations:

  • Edmund Cartwright, after witnessing the Turk, is inspired to invent and patent the first power loom—a genuine leap for the Industrial Revolution. (44:41)

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5. Changing Hands: Showmen, Con Men, and American Adventures

(48:40–71:07)

• The Turk’s New Masters:
  After Kempelen’s death, the machine is sold multiple times, upgraded, and further presented by showmen like Johann Maelzel—a flamboyant and often unscrupulous engineer who takes the Turk on extensive tours.
  • “Let’s just—he's a showman. Dare I say, the greatest showman.” (Dana, 51:19)
• Meeting the Greats:
  The Turk faces off against Napoleon (with a legendary story: after Napoleon attempts to cheat, the Turk sweeps the pieces off the board! 53:15), P.T. Barnum (“You got the goods, kid.” 72:39), and even Edgar Allan Poe (73:32), who analyzes the trick as a precursor to detective fiction.

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6. The Secret is Revealed (82:31–84:43)

• How It Really Worked:
  When finally disassembled in the 1840s, the secret is explained by Dr. John Kearsley Mitchell and later publicized by his son Silas Weir Mitchell:
  • Inside, a skilled chess player hides on a sliding seat, moving as different panels are opened during the “inspection”.
  • The chessboard uses magnetic pieces: magnets beneath each square transmit piece positions to a mirror-board below, allowing the hidden player to follow the game, then manipulate the Turk’s arm and hand via rods and pulleys.
  • The use of candles covers for smoke and the whirring mechanisms, and secret signals (number wheels, taps, candelabra) ensured coordination between operator and showman.
  • “[The operator] could follow the game upside down. And then he would have his own board… able to move this thing that then would move the arm of the Turk...” (Dana, 84:02)

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7. Legacy & Philosophical Questions

(86:22–91:05)

• Romanticized Myths:
  Countless romantic stories about the Turk’s operators (like a heroic, legless Polish revolutionary smuggled out by Kempelen) circulated, revealing the wishful thinking and credulity the hoax played upon.
• From Hoax to AI: The Limits of Machine “Intelligence”
  The Turk raised profound challenges—could a machine really “think”? Later, actual computers (Deep Blue, etc.) would genuinely defeat chess grandmasters, but even now, the episode asks:
  • Does programmatic computation count as “thinking,” or merely clever information processing?
  • Searle’s Chinese Room thought experiment is invoked to question if a computer, or even a Turk-style automaton, can “understand” what it is doing, or is simply following rules.
    • “Is a computer thinking if it is playing chess, is my question to you.” (Dana, 87:50)
    • “I think they are playing chess. I don’t know if they’re thinking.” (Lizzy, 91:13)
• Modern Echoes:
  The Mechanical Turk’s trickery is directly paralleled with present-day “AI” demos, such as recent examples from Tesla robots or Amazon’s cashier-less stores, which rely on hidden human labor or misdirection—updated for the present but similar in spirit.
  • “It’s been 250 years since the Mechanical Turk and Tesla was still doing a Mechanical Turk, just with a better-looking robot.” (Dana, 91:58)

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Memorable Quotes & Moments

• On Rao Khan’s Exoneration:
  • “While in Benat, he solved a local mystery, freeing several wrongly imprisoned men from jail.” (Dana, 13:42)
• Kempelen’s Self-Promotion:
  • “I will return within a year with an invention far better than anything this French guy has.” (Dana, 16:17)
• Napoleon vs. The Turk:
  • “Napoleon tries to cheat and then a third time and then the Turk shakes his head and sweeps all the pieces off the board and he's like, that's it.” (Dana, 53:15)
• Edgar Allan Poe, proto-detective:
  • “Edgar Allan Poe writes this famous essay explaining how he thinks it works… ‘you never see that Schlumberger guy in the same place as the Turk.’” (Dana, 73:32)
• On Philosophy & AI:
  • “A computer can say, if a piece moves here, then, like, statistically, I should move my piece here. But does that mean it, like, understands?” (Dana, 88:56)
  • “Isn’t the act of computing what the best chess move is—that is what chess is. Regardless of the outcome.” (Lizzy, 90:17)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Introduction & Chess Context: 03:09–05:07
• Automata Hype & Historical Background: 06:47–11:48
• Kempelen's Life & The Court Rivalry: 11:48–17:21
• Mechanics of The Turk & the Cabinet Trick: 19:36–26:12
• European Tour, Celebrity Matches (Philidor, Franklin, Napoleon): 35:40–54:04
• American Adventures & Poe’s Analysis: 71:07–75:44
• The Great Reveal (How it Worked): 81:09–84:43
• Philosophical Discussion: What is "Thinking"? AI Parallels: 86:22–91:05

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Tone & Style

The episode is fast-paced, witty, and filled with asides drawing connections between historical hoaxes and the quirks of present-day technology, pop culture, and philosophical debates. Dana’s nerdy enthusiasm and Lizzy’s irreverent humor keep the subject light, even as they discuss serious topics like technological fraud, credulity, and the ongoing tension between illusion and reality.

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Conclusion

The story of The Mechanical Turk stands as a multilayered parable about the intersection of technology, showmanship, and belief, demonstrating that the desire to be amazed—and the tendency to believe in the impossible—are perennial human traits. The episode ends with a discussion about whether current advances in AI are truly any less reliant on misdirection and wishful thinking than the Turk itself, making the story both a quirky historical curiosity and a lens on contemporary tech culture.

To quote the hosts’ closing thoughts:

• Lizzy: "I think they are playing chess. I don’t know if they’re thinking." (91:13)
• Dana: “That’s our show. That’s the decade-spanning story of the Mechanical Turk.” (92:20)

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Transcript

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[Dana Schwartz]

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[Lizzy Logan]

No one ever seems to believe me.

[Dana Schwartz]

When I swear I never was deceiving a blessed one dream. Welcome to Hoax, a podcast about the lies we wish were true and truths.

[Lizzy Logan]

That sound like lies.

[Dana Schwartz]

I'm the ghost of Dana Schwartz.

[Lizzy Logan]

And I'm the evil twin of Lizzy Logan.

[Dana Schwartz]

Welcome to the show. Lizzie, are you a chess player?

[Lizzy Logan]

No. I, at the very beginning of this year, learned the basic rules of how each of the pieces move. I mean, that's step one, and that is the entirety of my chess career.

[Dana Schwartz]

I like playing chess and I like the aesthetics of chess. I like studying chess. Like, I love doing, like, tutorials and puzzles online.

[Lizzy Logan]

But.

[Dana Schwartz]

But I'm not good at chess at all because I'm too impatient. I just like moving the pieces.

[Lizzy Logan]

I like the word chess.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzy Logan]

And I am a huge ABBA fan, and therefore I have some affection for the musical chess.

[Dana Schwartz]

Should we go to new. Should we plan a hoax trip to New York to see a loosely associated, very tangential production of chess? Sure. All of this is to say this episode involves chess. Yes. But it does not require any knowledge of how the game works, except that it is, you know, a game of wits.

[Lizzy Logan]

Well, yeah. I mean, I feel like it's like, if you don't know what chess is, it's really. It's a board game, it's really hard, and it's really old, and it's black pieces and white pieces. But I think we can assume that all the listeners know what chess is.

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, here's another question. Does it mean anything if I say Mechanical Turk to you?

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay, so here's. Here's the thing, Dana.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzy Logan]

I know what. I know this one.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzy Logan]

And I know what it actually was.

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, what do you think it was? Or what do you think it is? The hoax?

[Lizzy Logan]

I mean, can I like all of it?

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. I don't think you're gonna get it right.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay. Because I watched like a. I watched a YouTube video about cheating scandals in chess.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay.

[Lizzy Logan]

And they covered this one. And they said that it was. We can edit this out. If I'm about to ruin the episode.

[Dana Schwartz]

It'S a lot more convoluted, I think, than you're gonna get.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay, well, yeah, okay, obviously, because you said this was a long episode, but what the YouTuber Sarah Z said was that it was chess masters crouched underneath just playing chess against whoever was playing chess against the like quote unquote automaton and moving like above ground pieces with magnets, like just playing chess by candlelight.

[Dana Schwartz]

So that's like 70% right.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay.

[Dana Schwartz]

Because spoiler alert. This is a hoax. Yes. I'm gonna, we're gonna get off the, you know, get off the bat and say this is a podcast called Hoax. This is a hoax. Yes. But we're gonna get into deeper and I think actually pretty philosophical questions about if a robot can play chess. So at its heart, this is an episode about a man named Wolfgang von Kempelen. Some people falsely say that he's a baron. He's not. He's related to a baron. But like, if you ever see that, you're like, this person doesn't know what they're talking about. And he created an automaton that he claimed could play chess. And he.

[Lizzy Logan]

Well, he also claimed it was an automaton. Yeah, he created like a puppet, basically.

[Dana Schwartz]

We're going to get into it.

[Lizzy Logan]

I'm getting ahead of you. Okay. I'll just let you. I'll let you be the co host of this podcast.

[Dana Schwartz]

So let me place you now in the 1700s.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay.

[Dana Schwartz]

The industrial revolution is coming up. Everything smells terrible. Yeah, everyone smells horrible. No one's taking enough baths. Breath everywhere. No deodorant. Industrial revolution is happening and people are getting excited by automatons, basically. I mean quite literally, like when I say automaton, what you're picturing like a jerky machine that's sometimes humanoid, like doing things like. That is correct. This kind of. I could get into so much more detail, but because we have to focus this episode, it's sort of like an evolution from medieval clocks. If you picture like a medieval clock tower, eventually, like figurines came out. Yeah, like a cuckoo clock. Okay.

[Lizzy Logan]

Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

So like, basically what happened, I'm like racing through this in the Western world. Eventually what happened was clockmakers began making smaller and smaller automata for like clocks for rich people that it's like it hits 12 and like a little person comes out and does something. And then eventually these clock makers built just like automata for rich people to like entertain themselves.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay.

[Dana Schwartz]

And they kind of became, like. Sometimes they were, like, mechanical pictures with moving parts or, like, mechanical things for your table that could pour tea on their own.

[Lizzy Logan]

Yeah. Like in the opening of Wallace and Gromit, where he can put his pants on.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, like that, but much smaller. And for rich people to, like, put in their cabinets of curiosities. Okay, cool. And most of these end up in the collection of kings and queens and emperors, which encourages engineers to do this sort of thing. Because if you are, like, an engineer who wants to, like, win favor of a king or queen, you, like, make them a fun little gift.

[Lizzy Logan]

Like, sucks that we don't do this anymore.

[Dana Schwartz]

I'm sure someone is.

[Lizzy Logan]

I'm just like, why hasn't anyone ever gotten me one of these?

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, so the kind of father of the biomechanical automaton, like, automatons that were meant to, like, look like people, is a guy named Jacques de Vacation who makes three kind of very famous automaton in 1738. One that can play a flute with, like, fake lungs. So it is blowing, and it is playing the flute.

[Lizzy Logan]

So I guess we do still have them. They're just sex dolls. Okay.

[Dana Schwartz]

Sorry.

[Lizzy Logan]

You said blowing, and I was like.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, yeah, Blowing point. Okay.

[Lizzy Logan]

He can make one that has, like. Do you have to pump it, or does it have, like, a little battery?

[Dana Schwartz]

Basically, most of them work the way grandfather clocks work with weights.

[Lizzy Logan]

You act like, I know how grandfather.

[Dana Schwartz]

You know how grandfather clocks work, but, like, weighted.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay.

[Dana Schwartz]

And you have to wind it up. Okay. He also makes a boy with a pipe and a drum. So, like, playing music. Okay. And then he makes what he thinks is his piece de resistance, this duck that can simulate digestion. Like, you feed it breadcrumbs, and then it would excrete, I'm gonna say, like, breadcrumb poop.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay. I mean, that would be, like, interesting.

[Dana Schwartz]

And, like, imagine if you see, like, a mechanical duck that you can actually feed breadcrumbs and then, like, it poops out, like, green pellets, Watery.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay.

[Dana Schwartz]

The thing I want to note here is it didn't. It wasn't actually real. He was claiming that it was, like, digesting. And I'm putting that in air quotes, digesting the pellets. But really, it just had.

[Lizzy Logan]

It was two other.

[Dana Schwartz]

It was.

[Lizzy Logan]

It's like how baby dolls work, where it's. You feed it baby food and some. And then, like, you, like, change the diaper. But really, it's that, like, you're putting one thing in. You're putting in substance A. And Then Substance B is coming out. Exactly.

[Dana Schwartz]

There was a preset chamber with, like, green food dye. Not food dye, but, like, green dyed pellets that came out as the poop. So it's interesting and it's cool, but actually, you know, we'll be.

[Lizzy Logan]

The prestige.

[Dana Schwartz]

The prestige is happening. Although very interestingly, this man did kind of invent the first flexible rubber tube in order to build the, like, quote unquote intestines. So actually, good scientific and important things are being developed and in service of these, I don't know, like, toys. Toys, yeah.

[Lizzy Logan]

Right.

[Dana Schwartz]

Entertainment.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay, okay, Go off. Tube. Tube guy.

[Dana Schwartz]

But he sort of causes this surge of public interest in automata. If you're an engineer, it's kind of like a fun challenge, especially if you're trying to, at this point, understand how humans work. Like, they're still understanding, like, biology, and so they're kind of scientists. Scientists I'm using loosely. But, like, these engineers are kind of using automata to explore what they can figure out about how humans work. Like, the guy. This guy making a flute playing automaton was interested in, like, lung pressure.

[Lizzy Logan]

Yeah, no, totally. I mean, if you can. Because eventually we're gonna get. Like, someone's gonna make a pacemaker. So, yeah, you know, it's all progress.

[Dana Schwartz]

But, like, that actually is the thesis of the episode that, like, people are doing weird little interesting things and it is progress. You know what?

[Lizzy Logan]

Like, some. A lot of things are made by people, like, fucking around.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, but correct. And keep that in mind. Okay, we're gonna focus on this guy named Wolfgang von Kempelen. He was born in 1734, and he's a bureaucrat in the court of Maria Theresa of Austria. And if that name kind of sounds familiar, it's because she's Marie Antoinette's mom. Yes. So Wolfgang is this sort of notably handsome man. He speaks several languages, he's charming. He's sort of this, like, rising star in the bureaucracy. He has this translation job, translating the Hungarian civil code from Latin to German, which is now the new official language of the Austro Hungarian Empire. And he does it in just a few days, which astonishes people. And everyone's so impressed by him, and he gets a job as a counselor to the imperial court. He loves tinkering. And now that he's sort of a successful bureaucrat, he has enough money to kind of afford his science hobby. He gets sort of jobs with the government as a comptroller of salt mines in Transylvania and comes up with a system of pumps to drain the mines when they flood, which seems very valuable. He designed waterworks for a castle in Pressburg, which is the capital of Hungary, now Bratislava. He is coordinating the settlement of this mountainous region in Hungary called Banat, which is designing the houses and planning the villages, literally planning the settlement. And I do want to point out in this book that I read about this whole subject called the Mechanical Turk by Tom Standage. There is the best sentence just out of context, and I want to stress, this sentence has no more context on either the front or back. We never find out anything more. There's no footnote. I could not find anything else about this.

[Lizzy Logan]

Tom, get in touch with the podcast and let us know more about this sentence.

[Dana Schwartz]

So while he's, you know, coordinating this settlement, we get this sentence. Quote, while in Benat, he solved a local mystery, freeing several wrongly imprisoned men from jail.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay, great. Vague, vague.

[Dana Schwartz]

Great.

[Lizzy Logan]

I would like to know what they were imprisoned for and what the mystery was.

[Dana Schwartz]

I would love to know what the local mystery is. Tom, if you're listening, please let me know if anyone knows any information on the local mystery he solved. That sounds like a miniseries, a Hulu TV show.

[Lizzy Logan]

I would watch. This guy sounds like a local folk hero of just, like, he just. He just wanders through town, like, tinkering away and fixing up little things and.

[Dana Schwartz]

Solving mysteries and freeing innocent men from prison or.

[Lizzy Logan]

Yeah, like, like, like he should be the star of a CBS procedural.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, yeah. The automaton maker. Yeah. So now, Fast forward it's 1769, and Maria Theresa of Austria invites to her palace in Vienna to see a performance by this famous French illusionist, Francois Pelletier. And she invites Kempelin, because in addition to just like being a wandering Good Samaritan, he's known as kind of a good explainer of popular science. He's kind of like the Carl Sagan of his day. Or, like, he would be a great podcaster.

[Lizzy Logan]

Is he almost like, sort of like a mythbuster?

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, she literally brings him because he's, like, conversational. And she wants to know how these tricks are gonna be done.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay.

[Dana Schwartz]

And these, quote, unquote, like, magic tricks are going to be based in science. Because at this point, if you're, like, a magician or illusionist, you're really gonna wanna stress that you're working with, quote, white magic as opposed to black magic. Right.

[Lizzy Logan]

You're like, I'm doing an illusion. It's magical from science, not from, I'm in touch with the devil.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. So we don't know exactly what magic tricks Pelletier performs We know that they're magnetic games. Kempelen is not impressed. He publicly, in front of the entire court, says, I will return within a year with an invention far better than anything this French guy has. And Maria Teresa actually excuses him from his job for six months to go do it and says, go build an automaton more impressive than anything this guy is showing you. What. Which, like, great way to get a sabbatical.

[Lizzy Logan]

That is such a good. Like, Babe Ruth calling a shot. Kennedy being like, we're gonna go to the moon. We're. I'm making you an automaton, Queen Marie.

[Dana Schwartz]

And it really is, like, a matter of national pride at this point to, like, show, like, well, Austrians can do this better than French people.

[Lizzy Logan]

Yes.

[Dana Schwartz]

So six months later, he comes back to the palace in 1770 with this automaton.

[Lizzy Logan]

And it's also a classic recipe for someone's gonna lie. You know what I mean? Because you've now set yourself a high bar that it's going to be so embarrassing if you don't clear it, that you've left yourself no wiggle room, that if you can't clear it, you're gonna lie.

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, I wanna actually be a little, like, in defense of the hoax. This was in response to a magic act, right. So he saw this impressive magic act, and he's like, I can explain how you're doing all of this. I'm not impressed. He comes back, he says, I'm gonna come back with something more impressive. And I will say, inarguably, he does.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay. He comes back with a. With a better hoax.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. So he comes back. I'm gonna describe this to you. It's a humanoid figure wearing a turban with a black beard with. Wearing Ottoman robes. So it's. He's known as the Mechanical Turk. And it's not only because it was, like, considered exotic. Like, Turkish people at this point in Vienna, people were drinking Turkish coffee and having servants wear Turkish costumes. It was very stylish. But also, chess was popularized in Persia and had spread throughout the Muslim world. So there's also this sort of, like, chess association.

[Lizzy Logan]

Interesting.

[Dana Schwartz]

With the Ottoman dress that the quote unquote, mechanical Turk is wearing. So it's a humanoid figure sitting at this cabinet that's four feet long, two and a half feet deep, and three feet high. And it's on brass casters so it can move and swivel around. The front of the cabinet has three doors and a large drawer underneath. So I'm showing Lizzie a picture. It kind of looks like we'll put it on Instagram. But it's one drawer that pulls out. Yeah. The left arm holds, when it's not playing, holds a long smoking pipe. The right arm is on the top of the cabinet, and it will use its left arm to play chess. So the smoking pipe is just decorative.

[Lizzy Logan]

And the right arm is decorative.

[Dana Schwartz]

Is decorative. It's not gonna be used. So he wheels in this automaton and announces to the court that he made an automaton that can play chess. Now, up until this point, automaton technology had come pretty far. Automaton could play musical instruments and play multiple musical. Like, play multiple songs on musical instruments. Like there were. I'm going to use the word robots, but, like, robots that could play the flute and, like, play different songs based on how you. Again, like, quote unquote, programmed, but, like, basically using music box technology. Like, you know. So, like, people don't know exactly everything automatons can do because we're still figuring it out. So people are, I think, probably, if not immediately skeptical, then, like, curious, because maybe an automaton can't play chess.

[Lizzy Logan]

And also, like, what does play chess mean? You know what I mean? Like, to play chess and to be good at chess are two very different things. Like, I can imagine someone, maybe not at this time, but, like, if you told me that someone with some sort of rudimentary programming device made a little machine that could move all of the pieces in the way that the different pieces move, I would be like, yeah, that's not that many different functions. There's what, like, 10 different pieces in chess? Like, that's not that many different functions. That's different from knowing. That's different from being able to understand and process how the other person has moved their pieces and then what the rules are for. You know what I mean? Like, these are.

[Dana Schwartz]

These are great questions, Lizzie. Keep them all in mind.

[Lizzy Logan]

That's different. Like, I could, like, move a pawn and move a knight and move a castle and that. That counts as playing chess.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzy Logan]

But, like, understanding how many moves away from checkmate, I am, like, playing a full game of chess is different. So, like, to play chess, like, you know, let's get real, Phil, Philosophical. What does it mean to play chess?

[Dana Schwartz]

We will get philosophical. So basically, he wheels in this automaton. I think most people are thinking exactly what Lizzie posited at the beginning of this episode, that, like, well, there's a big old cabinet, a guy's just tucked inside there, right? Yeah.

[Lizzy Logan]

And again, I posited that based on a YouTube video so I cited my sources and I did. That's like based on me being a.

[Dana Schwartz]

Scholar, based on YouTube. So part of the presentation of the Mechanical Turk is kind of a performance. So how the performance begins is Compellen comes over to the cabinet and at first he just unlocks the left hand side and he shows the left hand cabinet opens and. And there's like clockwork machinery inside and sort of like the circular cylinder that was used in like music playing automaton at the time. So like the machinery would kind of look familiar to some people. Clockwork machinery. And he would walk around the back of the machine and hold a, open another little door and hold a candle up in the back to show like nothing behind there. Then he would close that, open up the big bottom drawer and show inside there's a, you know, chess pieces that he would pull out. And there was a pillow that then went under the automaton's elbow. And then you're probably thinking like, oh, well, then the person's probably hiding in the other big container. Well, that's when you know the show continues. Asked and answered. Then he would open the big section, the last like 2/3 right section of the cabinet and show that it was mostly empty. If you thought a person was in there, it's like mostly lined with dark cloth. There's some general mechanics. There's a red cushion and there's a wooden box that then he pulls out. And he would also spin the whole thing around to be like, see? Nothing to see here. He lifts up the figure's robe from behind to show there's machinery behind it, spin it around on its casters, and then put everything back in place and say, everyone got a good look, let's go.

[Lizzy Logan]

I mean, this is like literally what magicians do before they like saw a lady in half. Like, this is the exact same, the exact same thing of like, there's nothing in the box. Like, this is a. There's a exact way you do this.

[Dana Schwartz]

It's a magic trick. What part of the process is now is he takes out a candelabra, puts it on top, lights it. He's holding this wooden box that he'll occasionally just kind of like look in. So you're like, what's going on with that box? And he invites someone to play chess with it, a count. Count Cobenzel will be the first opponent. And what kind of happens is you move your piece. He will ask you to try to move your piece exactly to the center of each square to make it easier for the automaton because it will move its left hand and use its hand kind of like a claw machine to pick up the pieces and move them. And it will. It will play a game of chess using its mechanical arm. And if you moved the incorrect pie, it would shake its head and then move your piece back to where it was supposed to be. The machine would nod twice if it checked your. If it threatened your queen, and then three times if it checked your king. Eventually, later in the life of this machine, it will actually say check and then eventually check in French. And it could also roll its eyes, which is very funny. That is my favorite detail. As I mentioned before, Kempelen would, like, move around during this performance every few moves and not at regular intervals. He would, like, come and rewind it up. He would like, look in this box he was holding sometimes, and he would just, like, walk around the room. He would let observers take big magnets nearby to show, like, not. You can disturb this with magnets. That's not how I'm doing this. And let it play chess. In addition to actually playing full games of chess, it could do this thing called the Knights Tour, which is like a chess puzzle trick where you can put a knight on any piece of the board. And the goal is to try to get it to touch every piece, every square of the board, only once.

[Lizzy Logan]

Oh, interesting.

[Dana Schwartz]

So it's like a math puzzle. Yeah. And it could do that.

[Lizzy Logan]

That's the type of thing that I would have been like as a kid. You could have kept me occupied for a couple of hours trying to do that. And it's also, like, as a computer.

[Dana Schwartz]

Game, and it's also the kind of thing that, like, you're like, I could see an automaton being able to do this.

[Lizzy Logan]

Well, once somebody figured it out, you could just program an automaton to do that series of moves. Like, it wouldn't have to think it would just do the same one every time.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, but actually you could just.

[Lizzy Logan]

Oh, but if you picked a different. Okay, okay, okay.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, the audience could pick. So during this first performance, he also does something. He lets the automaton do something that, like, pretty quickly he'll remove from the performance, which is letting it, like, speed speak using a letterboard, like a Ouija board. Like, you could ask it questions and it would answer, but, like, pretty quickly he's like gilding the lily. This is just a chess playing robot. So that gets retired pretty quickly.

[Lizzy Logan]

Because if it can talk, then it's just like a. Oh, you've invented, like, a whole person.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzy Logan]

You're like, you're actually.

[Dana Schwartz]

Again, like, this podcast is called hoax. This is a hoax. I think Templin realized, like, okay, if I'm also positing that it can answer questions like, let's just stick with soul.

[Lizzy Logan]

You know what I mean? Like, where does this end?

[Dana Schwartz]

It's a chess robot. So the show, unsurprisingly, is a massive success. People cannot figure out how he did it. People think he actually, he invented a chess playing robot. Well.

[Lizzy Logan]

Cause this is so smart. Because it's not just a magic trick. It's also like, can you beat this robot in chess? There's a competition element.

[Dana Schwartz]

And it's not just, can you solve that this isn't true. There's also, we're at the exact stage of history where you're like, maybe you can make a robot that plays chess.

[Lizzy Logan]

And also just, are you good enough to beat the robot? Like, there's two for smart people. There's three different games to play. One of them's chess. The other is, how does this work? And then the other one is like, does this work?

[Dana Schwartz]

Is this real? Yeah. Yeah. So it becomes a massive success. The Empress loves it, makes campellan do a bunch of appearances, and it becomes the talk of basically Europe, because people at court write letters describing it. So. And.

[Lizzy Logan]

And you don't even need to. Another reason to not have it talk is that it doesn't need to speak a language. Everybody speaks chess.

[Dana Schwartz]

Everyone speaks chess. And people are like, arguing in public letters to newspapers about whether it's even possible to have a machine play chess. One guy writes that, like, obviously there's a guy in the cabinet. And then another guy writes back that's like, no, I saw inside the cabinet. It is not big enough for even a small child or a monkey. And that's important because there was a report at this time that the Sultan of Baghdad had a chess playing monkey. So you're like, maybe I have a tiny monkey inside, but it just does not seem physically possible to have a person in there. Publication of these letters goes to, you know, French newspapers. The Empress brings Kembelin back from his posting in Banat, where presumably he was solving other local mysteries, and she gives him an additional allowance, basically doubling his salary. And, like, gives him a bunch of engineering tasks. Like, he mission accomplished.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay?

[Dana Schwartz]

Now he's at court, like, making hydraulic systems, like, elaborate mechanical beds. Like, he wants to be someone who's, like, doing science. And, like, she's like, you nailed this. Automaton entertainment. Here's double your salary. Dream Job.

[Lizzy Logan]

Can you imagine being the French magician who did such a lackluster trick that in response, this guy, like, changed Europe, truly.

[Dana Schwartz]

And, like, publicly, like, I did this because this guy's magic fucking sucks.

[Lizzy Logan]

Yes.

[Dana Schwartz]

Kempelen tries to distance himself from the Turk at this point. Like, it did its job, and it was a stepping stone for him to do more science work. And now he's doing work that he's, like, more excited by. He's trying to work on a typewriter that blind people can use, and he's very interested in a machine that can imitate the human voice. He's just.

[Lizzy Logan]

He's, like, trying to help the deaf and the.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, it's kind of like he used this to, like, get his name out there, and now he's doing the things. It's like a par. Imagine someone making a parody Twitter account in college that they're like, great, I got my name out there, and now I'm gonna do, like, more work. I'm proud of that sort of thing.

[Lizzy Logan]

That would never happen.

[Dana Schwartz]

No, imagine that. The heyday of 2014. So there's this gap of several years where the mechanical Turk just doesn't play. In 1774, there's this Scottish nobleman named Sir Robert Murray who basically insists on playing, and he writes these letters, and Kempelen's like, it's broken. It needs to be maintained. And he's like, no, no, I insist. He writes that he and, like, 15 other Scotsmen come to the scientist's house to play. And then he comments. He writes that, like, quote, the automaton had been dismounted for some years because I suppose it took up too much of the gentleman's time. So again, Compellen is like, I'm a civil servant. I'm an engineer. I'm proud of the fact that I made this thing. And no one has correctly guessed how it works, but this isn't, like, what my main interest is.

[Lizzy Logan]

Yeah, okay.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. But then Maria Theresa dies, and the new emperor is her son, Joseph ii. And it's a little tricky when you're a civil servant who had been given a big bonus by, like, a patron who liked you, and now she's not in power anymore. So, you know, he wants to make Joseph II happy. Joseph II has this visit coming up from Grand Duke Paul of Russia, who's the son of Catherine the Great. They need entertainment. They want to, like, show off how smart Austria is. And so they're like, hey, wasn't there that, like, mechanical chess playing Turk?

[Lizzy Logan]

Like, why don't we get that Everybody liked that.

[Dana Schwartz]

Everyone liked that. So he resurrects the mechanical turk.

[Lizzy Logan]

You know what it is? It's like if you're really known for being peewee and then you're like, I'm gonna do other acting roles. And it's like, you can. That's not what people want to see, but you can.

[Dana Schwartz]

We want you to play the hits. Yeah. So the new. And then when the new emperor tells you to play the hits, you play the hits.

[Lizzy Logan]

Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

So he comes back with the chess player and it is still a huge hit and it's so successful.

[Lizzy Logan]

Everyone's like nostalgic.

[Dana Schwartz]

They're like, yeah, the trick. Yeah, I remember that. And they still can't figure out how it works. Yeah. And it's such a big hit that Joseph II insists on a two year European tour. He's like, you are no more bureaucratic duties.

[Lizzy Logan]

You're on to work.

[Dana Schwartz]

It's a mandatory sabbatical. And again, it's like he has to do it because it's the emperor.

[Lizzy Logan]

It's like Idina Menzel. You're singing Let it go. I don't care if you can hit the notes.

[Dana Schwartz]

You are singing let it go. You are singing let it go.

[Lizzy Logan]

Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

It's almost as if the automaton has a life of its own.

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[Dana Schwartz]

So he wanted to tour around Europe. Paris is the logical first step because it's sort of the chess capital of Europe. The trip begins in April of 1780.

[Lizzy Logan]

Does it ever go to Turkey?

[Dana Schwartz]

No. No.

[Lizzy Logan]

That's so rude.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, it stops at Versailles and it's so popular there. They stay longer than expected and they go to Paris where it's on display. Spectators are charged a small admission fee. It will lose a game. Occasionally it loses to this man named Mr. Bernard, and he's a second rank player, which sounds bad. You're like second rank?

[Lizzy Logan]

Well, I mean, but out of how many ranks?

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, I will say there are only five second rank players and only two first ranked players. Yeah.

[Lizzy Logan]

Isn't it like tennis where like to even get a rank you have to be like, really good?

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, exactly. So throughout the mechanical turk's life, it will lose a handful of games, but it will win so many more. Okay, so it's like, you know, keeps. When it loses, it's notable.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay, so that's like bragging rights. It's like, I beat that robot.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, exactly. Like, I know. We know the name of this guy. Like a lawyer. Yeah, we know who he is. Good job. It keeps going throughout the summer. People are writing letters about it. It stays at the Cafe de la Regence, which is like the chess cafe where people played.

[Lizzy Logan]

Oh, I thought you meant that, like it stayed there as a hotel. And I was like, you mean the guy who made it stayed there? Right? I was like, did it get its own room?

[Dana Schwartz]

Like, no, it got its own box. Yeah, but no, it's like this is like the cafe where all the chestnuts.

[Lizzy Logan]

Is posted up there. Okay.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. And so there's a legendary player named Le Gal who's one of the first ranked players and it loses to him. But everyone really wanted to play this legendary player named Philidor. That's like the match of the century. Everyone wants to see Ken Jennings.

[Lizzy Logan]

He's the Mike Tyson.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzy Logan]

Oh, Ken Jennings. Okay.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, I was gonna say Ken Jennings versus Watson. Whatever.

[Lizzy Logan]

Didn't Watson play chess?

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, I think. No, no, we'll get to that a little later.

[Lizzy Logan]

I want to see the automaton play Watson.

[Dana Schwartz]

It's the deep thought playing Caspar. Avenchess. We'll get there.

[Lizzy Logan]

Oh, my God.

[Dana Schwartz]

I know. So Philidor is this amazing French player. He took on three opponents at once while blindfolded, which seems insane.

[Lizzy Logan]

I think once you're that good at chess, like being able to see the board kind of doesn't matter. So I Think they like to do it blindfolded just to be like, tee hee.

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, he won. It was two wins in one draw, in case you were curious. And Philidor plays the Turk. Philidor does win.

[Lizzy Logan]

Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

But he later says it was a really hard time. And he says that it was pretty terrifying. And I'm not sure if it was because it was hard playing chess or it's just kind of like weird and scary to look at. Like maybe he thought it was terrifying just because it was like scary.

[Lizzy Logan]

Well, I feel like both. Like if you are, I mean, at this point, these people, chess is their full time job. Right. So like if you are just used to going human, a human, like kind of playing anything except a human would probably be really scary. And then playing something that looks like a human but isn't is probably like so freakish. Yeah, it's weird where you're just like, hey, hey, man. Like hey, freaky robo wooden dude. You keep moving your pieces around.

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, Philidor isn't the only celebrity in Paris around this time.

[Lizzy Logan]

Who else is famous in Paris at this time, Dana?

[Dana Schwartz]

A little man named Benjamin Franklin.

[Lizzy Logan]

Oh, I've heard of him.

[Dana Schwartz]

Heard of him. He was the signatory at the Treaty of Paris at the end of the American Revolutionary War. So he's still representing the US in France at this time. Kempelen is a huge Ben Franklin fan.

[Lizzy Logan]

That makes sense because they both like to make sense.

[Dana Schwartz]

So he's like a fanboy of science. And he writes to Benjamin Franklin to be like, hey, fan to fan, like, can I meet with you? And so Ben Franklin happens to also be a chess fanatic. Kempelen invites Franklin to his rooms to demonstrate the chess player, to show him the progress he's making on his speaking machine. Because he's fanboying out, he gets to use his chess player. He's like, okay, I have to be on this tour of Europe. I wish I wasn't, but at least I can meet my idols. And Benjamin Franklin plays the automaton and he loses.

[Lizzy Logan]

Yeah, I mean, Benjamin Franklin was good at so many things. It's okay if he's bad at one thing. And that thing is chess.

[Dana Schwartz]

And he probably wasn't even bad. The chess player is just like really good.

[Lizzy Logan]

Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

So then it goes to London in the autumn of 1783, goes on display 5 shillings. At the same time, there's this sort of promotional book that's published by a man named Carl Gottlieb von Windisch, who's a friend of Kempelen. So we know it's like an authorized biography. It's basically a book.

[Lizzy Logan]

Leaves out all of the cancelable things the Turk has done. The times he said slurs when he was drunk and, you know, grabbed women's butts with. With his hand.

[Dana Schwartz]

With his robotic hand.

[Lizzy Logan]

Well, with this. They say that hand is decorative, but that's his. That's his butt grabbing hand.

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, so this book is, like, written in the form of letters to an anonymous friend, like, telling the backstory of the automaton and Campbell and, like, what it does. So, again, these letters aren't real. It's like a ad campaign, an epistolary ad campaign. British newspapers are writing articles about people being gullible. This is also one of those things where I think with historical hoaxes, we're tempted to be like, oh, people were so dumb at the time. People thought that, like, robots could play chess. A. Yeah, some people did, because this.

[Lizzy Logan]

Isn'T one of the ones where I think people were dumb.

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, first, I want to say people did not know what automatons were capable of. And actually, robots can play chess. Now, people figured out robots can't play chess, so I'm just gonna say that. But even at the time, people were like, I know it's a magic trick, but I don't know how it works. Yes. So most, pretty much everyone kind of was just like, I don't know how it works. The newspapers also at this point are referencing the fact that the machine had beaten Mr. Philidor in Paris, which is how rumors get started, because he didn't.

[Lizzy Logan]

Oh.

[Dana Schwartz]

See?

[Lizzy Logan]

And sometimes newspaper writers get things wrong.

[Dana Schwartz]

Sometimes newspaper writers get things wrong.

[Lizzy Logan]

It's also so interesting that it's like, the fact that they're making it play chess. It's like somehow, somewhere, someone smart is involved in this. You know what I mean? It's like, okay, even if you're a snotty snot, and you're looking at this and you're going, okay, I don't know how this works, but I know that everyone falling for it is freaking stupid. Because there's. I haven't figured it out yet, but, like, there's got to be a really easy explanation, because automatons can't play chess. And it's like, well, somewhere, someone involved in this Mechanical Turk project is freaking smart because they're good at chess. And if I know one thing, it's that, like, chess is the smart people game.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, you're good at chess. Shorthand for being smart, which I actually.

[Lizzy Logan]

Don'T think is Necessarily true, but that's like the cultural understanding.

[Dana Schwartz]

So in England, there's this guy named Philip Thickness who writes an entire book called the Speaking Figure and the Automaton Chess Player, basically with his explanation for the hoax. And his explanation. Well, first he starts off by saying it's impossible for a machine to play chess.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay.

[Dana Schwartz]

So we know it's impossible for a machine to play chess, ergo, is a hoax. I'm going to figure out how it works. And his theory is that there is a child, quote, of 10, 12 or 14 in the machine, concealed inside the wooden base, using a mirror to look back at the reflected image of the game and move the arm. He's pointing out that, like, usually you can only see the Turk between 1 and 2pm like, the display hours, because a kid inside wouldn't want a longer confinement. And if it's just a robot, like, why wouldn't you want it to work more hours? And he also says, like, there could be room for the child to go up into the Turk automaton. Like, there's not really room in the cabinet, but it could, like, kind of go into the figure and then see through also, you know, other theories. See through sort of its robes, like, its clothes are like, semi transparent. So there are theories. I will say there are some people who see it who are like, I don't know if this is real or not, but, like, I feel very inspired by, like, what the technology could be capable of. This man, Edmund Cartwright, sees the Turk, is so inspired that he's like, we could make an automated loom.

[Lizzy Logan]

Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

He's like, if a machine can play chess, a machine can weave. And he makes an automatic loom. He patents the power loom three years later. Amazing. Which, like, really does a lot for the Industrial Revolution.

[Lizzy Logan]

That's cool.

[Dana Schwartz]

So it's like this fake technology. Even the people who believe it feel like machines are capable of more things that than they actually are capable of.

[Lizzy Logan]

That's cool.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. So Kembeland spends a year in London, then carries on around this time, while he's doing these sort of public displays, he kind of starts another technique, which is like a second chessboard, which is the. So, like, if I'm the figure playing chess, he'll set up like a chessboard next to the machine that the player will be at. So, like, the audience can see both people facing out and there'll just be like a little string in between and he'll be the go between. So, like, you'll move your piece and then he'll move the Piece on the Turk chessboard. And then the Turk will move his piece and then Compellen will move the piece on your chessboard. Does that make sense? No.

[Lizzy Logan]

What? Hold on.

[Dana Schwartz]

What would like, imagine just a stage, I guess. Not a stage, more like a little room. But now there's two people sitting next to each other, side by side.

[Lizzy Logan]

So we're playing one game.

[Dana Schwartz]

We're playing one game. He's just being the go between to like, move the pieces on each side.

[Lizzy Logan]

So that the audience can see better.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, so the audience can see better. And also because the machine works better if the pieces are exactly in the middle. So he can like make sure the pieces go exactly in the middle of the squares. Okay. So like that kind of happens. There's this guy around this time. It's like traveling through European cities. It goes to Leipzig, goes to Dresden, around Dresden. This man, Josef von Rachnitz, sees the Turk and becomes like a little obsessed with how it works. He's like, I'm going to figure it out. And he builds like models, trying to figure it out. And in 1789, comes up with this, like, full book with illustrations about how he thinks it works. So I'm going to show you his little illustration. This is his little illustration of how he thinks it works.

[Lizzy Logan]

There's a little man in a little box.

[Dana Schwartz]

It's like a little man in the box sitting. Sitting up. And he basically says the drawer that like, bottom drawer that pulls out doesn't go all the way to the back, right?

[Lizzy Logan]

So you could like sit with basically your feet in the drawer or like your bottom. Like you could sit like your butt in the drawer.

[Dana Schwartz]

No, it would be even like behind the drawer. Like, the drawer is like a false drawer. So you're sitting like kind of in the narrow space behind a square drawer ends.

[Lizzy Logan]

And then you just sit there and.

[Dana Schwartz]

You play the chess and like move the arm. The problem with this, it's like a good theory. The problem with it is his model is not proportional.

[Lizzy Logan]

The man is just so small.

[Dana Schwartz]

The man is small. It does not actually work. Like the way he drew it.

[Lizzy Logan]

Like, the man would be like 4ft tall.

[Dana Schwartz]

And it's not. He is literally asking a man to fit into a space 5ft long, 7 inches high and 18 inches wide. So like a person could not fit in that small of a space.

[Lizzy Logan]

Nope.

[Dana Schwartz]

So like, people are trying to figure it out, but no one is getting the right answer yet. Compellen returns to Vienna and like, probably keeps the machine dormant. We don't know for sure. But it's probably just like hanging out for 20 years and he finally gets to put the Turk behind him. Working as a civil servant, an inventor. He writes some plays, makes engravings, works on his speaking machine, which is his big passion. And like friends kind of know not to ask him about the Turk. There are like a lot of rumors at this point that like Capellan had this interaction with Frederick II of Prussia, who like insisted on knowing the secret and then bought it to like know the secret or like that he played Catherine the Great, but like, it didn't. So if you ever see like an account of the mechanical Turk playing Catherine the Great, you know, someone is full of shit.

[Lizzy Logan]

Interesting.

[Dana Schwartz]

So Campellen dies, age 70, March 26, 1804. And his son sells the mechanical Turk to this man named Johann Matel. And Meitzel is a Bavarian musician that is interested in music machines. He's also very like a good builder and engineer. He made this instrument, I guess you call it an instrument. Half an instrument, half an automaton called the Panharmonicon that makes the sound of an entire orchestra. And it's basically just like a big box, like 6ft wide, 6ft deep, that like plays music the way a whole orchestra does. And he's actually friends with Beethoven, who composed this like song, Wellington's Victory for it. Like, great. He makes a mechanical trumpet player that can be programmed to play many different songs. Cool. He also made this like his sort of piece.

[Lizzy Logan]

Is that how a player piano works?

[Dana Schwartz]

I don't know how a player piano works. He also makes this mechanical recreation of the burning down of Moscow when Napoleon got there. So if you're familiar with.

[Lizzy Logan]

Why would you want that?

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, if you're familiar with the Walking Phoenix film, Napoleon, haven't seen it. Well, or history. When Napoleon got to Moscow, Russian people burned it down rather than let him take the city.

[Lizzy Logan]

Oh, so it's like an anti Napoleon. Okay, I a little bit get why you would want a mechanical recreation.

[Dana Schwartz]

It's like a fun. If you're anti Napoleon, which like the rest of Europe is. It's a fun anti Napoleon little art piece. Okay, but this Mattel guy is also like a bit of a plagiarist. Like I mentioned, he was friends with Beethoven. He got him to write this piece for his mechanical orchestra. But then they got in beef because he didn't put Beethoven's name on the poster because he's like, I bought the song from you.

[Lizzy Logan]

You can't do that, bro.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, Beethoven was mad. And then also this one's like a Pretty egregious example. He invented a rudimentary metronome. And then he was traveling around and goes to Amsterdam and meets this inventor who's like, hey, you're working on a metronome. I came up with my own metronome. And it was like kind of the way you imagine a metronome. And Mitchell's like, oh, shit, that's better. Yeah. And he immediately just bounced. He was like, well, first can I buy it? And the guy was like, no. And he's like, okay, fine. And he leaves and goes to Paris and just applies for a patent and passes off as his own and calls it Matl's Metronome. And he will, at various points in the story, claim to have built the chess player himself in slightly. Slightly. In his defense, it had been out of commission for 25 years. So. And he like, made some modifications.

[Lizzy Logan]

Finders keepers is not a thing.

[Dana Schwartz]

No, I'm saying like, he. He did like put it back together, but also, you know, since it hadn't really been played in like a quarter of a century, like, not a lot of people like, remember or know who made it. So he. Yeah, he's. Let's just. He's like a. He's a showman. Yeah. Dare I say the greatest showman.

[Lizzy Logan]

He's a barnamish. A barnamish figure. Take a shot. If we mention P.T. barnum on this podcast.

[Dana Schwartz]

True. This is. It's. While the mechanical Turk is under the custodianship of Matel that it will meet its most famous opponent. It's gonna meet a little man by the name of Napoleon Bonaparte. Okay, so, yeah, so it turns out, you know, we're pretty anti Napoleon. But then he's gonna march on Europe and you're gonna wanna make good with him. Machel sets up the Turk in the apart of Napoleon's generals in 1809. And so a lot of this account, this is a very like, famous account. It comes from Napoleon's valet.

[Lizzy Logan]

Sorry, jumping ahead does. Matel must know how it works, though.

[Dana Schwartz]

Matel figures out how it works.

[Lizzy Logan]

So the son didn't tell him. He figured it out either.

[Dana Schwartz]

The son told him. But if you have it in front of you, you'll.

[Lizzy Logan]

The secret is in the box.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, you can figure out how it works. Okay. Okay.

[Lizzy Logan]

So he's using the same method that the original inventor used.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yes, exactly. He knows how it works.

[Lizzy Logan]

So he's working it the way that it works, plus some modifications and going.

[Dana Schwartz]

Around Europe, going around Europe going to do its most famous game. And now he's gonna play Napoleon most of this account. We're taking the history of this from Napoleon's valet, who went by Constant, who published his memoirs in 1830. There are a lot of other accounts of Napoleon with the Turk because, you know, it's like kind of the most famous and romantic episode in the Turk's history. So just like bear that in mind. But a lot of them come from this main account that I am going to take as the most historically accurate because it's someone who is actually the most.

[Lizzy Logan]

He's the most primary source.

[Dana Schwartz]

Basically, Napoleon sits across from the Turk, the Turk salutes, Napoleon makes a few moves and then like kind of trying to trick it, makes an intentionally false move to test the automaton to be like, what are you going to do if I me Emperor Napoleon like, tries to cheat and the automaton shakes his head and puts the piece back where it's supposed to be. And then Napoleon cheats again and then a third time and then the Turk shakes his head and sweeps all the pieces off the board and he's like, that's it. I love that.

[Lizzy Logan]

Because why wouldn't automaton be scared of Napoleon?

[Dana Schwartz]

He's not. He's a Roman.

[Lizzy Logan]

I don't give a shit.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. So another version of this story will say like, matl had Napoleon sitting at the second chessboard. And then like, we'll be like, and Napoleon tried to cross the roped off area and Mattel stopped him. Another.

[Lizzy Logan]

It's better if they're facing each other.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. And like another account will say that like, you know, when they were at. When he tried to put him at the second chessboard, Napoleon said, ah, I will only fight him face to face. And then like they played at the same chessboard, but it's like, that's a good story. But like, probably not. It doesn't.

[Lizzy Logan]

It's really hard for me to picture Napoleon being like, at a different chessboard. Like that's like so emasculating to be at like, this is your chessboard and this is your chessboard.

[Dana Schwartz]

And then they also say, like, Napoleon thought that the person inside the operator would be looking out through the Turk's clothing, so he tied a shawl around his body. And again I think that like, because spoiler alert, it wasn't. It's not a guy sitting in there. So like, if you did tie a shawl around the body, it wouldn't make a difference. Wouldn't make a difference. So I think sometimes these, like later stories are like meant to show like the Trickery involved. But, like, that's. There's no actual historical record of that. There's also later in, like, 1844. So again, this is, like, years later, there'll be a London News chess column that claims that they actually did play the full game, which lasted 19 moves, and they reproduce all of the moves, but, like, they don't have any evidence that those are the moves. And it also doesn't really make sense because it, like, has both of them playing very badly. Yeah.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay. I feel like if somebody were there recording the moves, like, we would, like, that would be in a museum if.

[Dana Schwartz]

Someone had recorded the moves. It feels unlikely that the first account of that would be a London News column in 1844. But at a certain point, Napoleon's stepson enters the chat.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay.

[Dana Schwartz]

He is famously married to a woman named Josephine.

[Lizzy Logan]

I didn't know he had a stepson.

[Dana Schwartz]

Josephine had kids from a first marriage. Her husband, incidentally.

[Lizzy Logan]

Guillotine by Napoleon.

[Dana Schwartz]

No.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay.

[Dana Schwartz]

By the French Revolution. Oh.

[Lizzy Logan]

But not her. Not her because she was just a lady in theory.

[Dana Schwartz]

She was like, almost. She was, like, in line to be guillotined. Luckily, the French Revolution, like, ran out of steam before that.

[Lizzy Logan]

History's so weird.

[Dana Schwartz]

History's weird. The stepson purchases the Turk sometime between 1809 and 1812. He loves chess. He wants to know the secret.

[Lizzy Logan]

And he's like, this is that machine that annoyed my stepdad. Did Napoleon get along with his stepson?

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. No. They were. They were good friends. No, they. They not good friends. They. They heavily. A lot of mutual respect. They were allies.

[Lizzy Logan]

This is such an interesting question to ask in an episode about chess. Did Napoleon get along with his stepson?

[Dana Schwartz]

He did.

[Lizzy Logan]

All right. Fantastic. Okay, so he loves chess.

[Dana Schwartz]

He wants to know the secret. Yep. Matel says that he'll only tell you this. Tell you the secret if you buy it.

[Lizzy Logan]

Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

Eugene offers to buy it.

[Lizzy Logan]

His name is Eugene.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay.

[Dana Schwartz]

Eugene. I don't know how to describe it in a French way. Okay. He offers to buy it. He pays 30,000 francs for it, which is three times what Metzl had paid. And so at this time, you know, Eugene is off with. Now he owns the chess robot. Meitel is busy working on a new Panharmonicon and a mechanical. New, you know, his fancy mechanical display of the conflagration of Moscow. Around this time, Napoleon is defeated by Wellington. We're gonna fast forward again to 1815, four years later.

[Lizzy Logan]

I'm just saying it all ties back because where was Napoleon defeated?

[Dana Schwartz]

Waterloo.

[Lizzy Logan]

Abba's Breakout hit.

[Dana Schwartz]

Abba's break. Chess, Chess. It all comes back. It all comes back. So again, I'm like, fast forwarding through a lot of history, but basically, Eugene has this robot for four years. Matel comes back now that he's like, I have my Panharmonicon, I have my conflagration of Moscow. I want my chess player back for my little museum. He tries to buy it back. Eugene is like, well, I'm not going to sell it for less than 30,000 francs, which is what.

[Lizzy Logan]

That makes sense.

[Dana Schwartz]

Maitel cannot afford that. There's a few different accounts. Meitel is, like, bad with money. But the likeliest sort of outcome here is that he kind of agrees to, like, a buy now, pay later, like, in installments.

[Lizzy Logan]

He tries to Klarna.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, he Klarna's the mechanical chess robot.

[Lizzy Logan]

I do understand the principle of don't sell something for less than you paid for it. That makes sense to me.

[Dana Schwartz]

So Meltal goes back on tour. He goes to London. He puts this mechanical Turk on display with his trumpeter and some other attractions. Crowds are really great by this point. It's like a speaking robot. It'll say, check, and later when it tours in France, it'll say, like, a check and French, and then say that from that point on, he doesn't do. He does mostly the same little show of opening cabinets in the same order that Campellan did, except he won't use the wooden cask that he was holding.

[Lizzy Logan]

He didn't walk around with the box.

[Dana Schwartz]

He doesn't walk around with the box because he's like, people aren't that superstitious anymore. The box is spoiler alert, misdirection.

[Lizzy Logan]

Oh, okay.

[Dana Schwartz]

And so he's like, oh, I'm not going to do that anymore.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay.

[Dana Schwartz]

But, you know, it's a big hit. People love it. Crowds are so great. He has to, like, keep it open every single day. So up until this point, the chess player, the mechanical turk, always went first because his side of the board is white at this point, to, like, make it jazzier and more impressive, Mittel will let the opponent go first using black, which is, like, not traditional. And he will also have the mechanical turk be down a pawn as, like, a little handicap. He'll, like, get rid of a pawn.

[Lizzy Logan]

I thought you said, like, upon, like, once upon a time, like, he is down upon. Down upon what?

[Dana Schwartz]

Down a pawn chess piece.

[Lizzy Logan]

Is he losing more?

[Dana Schwartz]

Not really. So he's like, quote, giving odds of pawn and move. And over 300 games of this, he loses about six.

[Lizzy Logan]

That's really good.

[Dana Schwartz]

That's really good. Although I will say, like, for me, you have a chess playing robot. In theory. That's what you were saying you have. Why do you need to make it harder for you to. I guess to me, I'm like, what's impressive isn't that it's good at chess. It's impressive that it's playing at all. You're purporting to have made a chess playing robot. Why do you need to be like, and I can win with one less pawn. Does that make it more impressive to you?

[Lizzy Logan]

I think it makes it fresh.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzy Logan]

Well, like, if you're. If, like, if you've lived in a world where we already accept that there's a chess playing robot.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, that's fair. And I mean, again, people at this point are writing. This man, Robert Willis, writes this pamphlet.

[Lizzy Logan]

It's like if you taught a dog to sing, like, you'd want it to sing. Well, yeah, that's true.

[Dana Schwartz]

So this man, Robert Willis, writes this pamphlet in 1821, trying to come up with how it's done. And his determination is like. He's like, okay, first, it's impossible for a robot to think. 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. So he's like, I know, it's a cabinet. It's a, you know, parlor trick. His explanation is that, like, a player moves up into the Turk's torso and guides the hand like a puppet. I guess like kind of a Big Bird situation. Yeah. Okay. This guy goes on to become a professor of mathematics at Cambridge. Smart dude. And his grandpa, incidentally, was the one who cured George III's first bout of madness. I just find that interesting.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay. So these people have thought a lot about what the mind can and cannot do.

[Dana Schwartz]

But you know what? Someone is in London at this time who actually thinks computers might be capable of reasoning.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay.

[Dana Schwartz]

And it's a man named Charles Babbage. Does that make sense?

[Lizzy Logan]

Really familiar.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. So he sees the Turk play in March 1819, and again, the. And he's, like, very impressed with the mechanisms of the movements. He's positive that it's under human control. He's like, this is not actually an automaton, but, you know. And he does know how. He's like, I can't figure it out. I know, but I can. This is a person doing it. But he's still, like, very inspired by this question of whether a chess playing machine is possible and Charles Babbage is going to work on this thing called the difference engine and then later the analytical engine which which are precursors to the modern computer. Yes, like he basically figures out like oh actually a computer would be capable of playing jazz.

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[Dana Schwartz]

So Mitchell continues on his tour. He goes to Amsterdam where if you remember there was a guy who's still mad that he stole his metronome.

[Lizzy Logan]

Yeah, as anyone would be.

[Dana Schwartz]

He tries to get metal invest investigated for piracy and he is basically forced to admit that he stole the design but then bounces immediately before he faces any consequences. Does another season in London. Goes to Paris, hit by another lawsuit, this time from Eugene for failure to make payments.

[Lizzy Logan]

Yeah, no kidding.

[Dana Schwartz]

So he tries to sell the Cherkoff to pay his debts. At this point there's no bites possible.

[Lizzy Logan]

Can he just give it back to Eugene?

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, he doesn't want to because it's like what he's gonna use to make money. But at this point no one buys it presumably. Cause they're like well it's not really yours to sell.

[Lizzy Logan]

Ye. Okay. Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

But he does what any I guess showman would do in this situation which is just say off to America. Uh huh.

[Lizzy Logan]

Land of running away from your debt.

[Dana Schwartz]

Land of running away from your debt. He lands in New York in 1826. Big crowds in New York. Sells out, a lot of newspaper coverage. Something slightly different is happening here. The chess mechanical turk is playing only endgames, which means you sort of like set up a puzzle and he would let opponent pick out of a book like which endgame they would want to play. And he would also let the opponent pick which, whether they want to be black or white, like which side they want to be and. But the turk would always start which kind of meant that like it would always win.

[Lizzy Logan]

Right?

[Dana Schwartz]

Like if you know the tricks of this book, like if you know all the end games, you kind of can like know all the puzzles, right?

[Lizzy Logan]

And you could Program them into a computer.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, in theory, potentially. Eugene at this point had died, but his family representatives do follow. Mittel, Tyler, I mean, yeah.

[Lizzy Logan]

These are the descendants of the step kids of Napoleon. They've got that dog in them, in case you're wondering.

[Dana Schwartz]

He does settle up so we don't have to worry about that anymore. The Turk is not playing full games, but there is a lot of public pressure from a man named Greco who's kind of like New York's leading chess player and he wants to play a full game against the Turk. But the Turk is like, no, no. Comes up with all these excuses.

[Lizzy Logan]

The Turk comes up with excuses.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, the Turk comes up with the excuses and then goes to Boston and there's like a big rivalry between New York and Boston over like who are better chess players and some other stuff. But like at this point with the Turk, they're like. And the Turk does start playing full games in Boston and loses a match, which causes people in Boston to like start bragging about how they're the best. Greco writes into a newspaper issuing a challenge. Metzl doesn't respond yet it beats a bunch of players. It beats most of the players, but does lose to a guy named Dr. Benjamin Green, who, as you know, it's like big bragging rights. I beat the robot goes to Philadelphia. It does briefly stop in New York City again and says it will rise to Greco's challenge.

[Lizzy Logan]

I'm sorry, can. The Turk is saying, the Turk says.

[Dana Schwartz]

This, okay, but metal.

[Lizzy Logan]

It's like, but first I want to get a slice of pizza.

[Dana Schwartz]

So yeah, I want to see the statue on cats. Yeah. He's like, should we put money on it? Let's meet privately. Metzl says, look, my Turk is still packed up because we're on our way to Philadelphia. But like you're bragging about how players in New York City are the best, better than European players. Would you be willing to play my associate, my sort of right hand man and secretary, a man named Schlumberger? Because if you're better than, you know, if you're saying you can beat the Turkish, you're saying you can beat European players. Play my secretary. Greco loses to Schlumberger and then issues a public apology saying that like, you know what? American chess players were beaten by a foreigner.

[Lizzy Logan]

So I love to see a man.

[Dana Schwartz]

Humboldt goes to Philadelphia, goes to Baltimore, where the Mechanical Turk, I find this very charming. He plays a man named Charles Carroll, who is 89 years old and at this point the last living signer of the Declaration of Independence. And, like, the Turk loses, but it plays, like, really badly. Like, it was, like, one move away from winning, and then, like, made a silly move. So it's like, it lost.

[Lizzy Logan]

I like that. I like that. I like giving a win to an old guy.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. So it's like, it lost to the old guy, which is cute. And at this point, while it's in Baltimore, two young boys climb onto a roof nearby, and they look down and they write into a newspaper and say, hey, we were hanging out on a roof and we saw a guy climb out of that machine. The newspaper first publishes its account, and then later is like, well, it was like, two boys were not corroborated. You know, it was, like, uncorroborated. And then also other newspapers are like, you stupid idiots. Like, that was Matl trying to drum up publicity. Like, he was trying to be like, can you, like, yeah. So people then accuse that newspaper of, like, falling for a hoax. Of, like, there were never two boys. You saw it. He was just trying to be like, all press is good press.

[Lizzy Logan]

Sure. But it doesn't sound like he really needs press.

[Dana Schwartz]

No, but that's so.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay, well, putting a pin in that a little bit.

[Dana Schwartz]

A little bit. Because another, like, very American thing that I think that happens is, like, there's a lot of imitators at this point.

[Lizzy Logan]

I was about to say, because the guy who invented this originally.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzy Logan]

Someone else could invent. I mean, he wasn't, like, the most genius person in the whole wide world. He was, like, very smart. Yeah, but he did all that stuff in Austria.

[Dana Schwartz]

But, like, there is, like, a quote, unquote, American chess player, but he's, like, less impressive robotically, which is again, you're like, well, the mechanical trick was invented decades ago, but still, it is less impressive mechanically. And it's also worse at chess.

[Lizzy Logan]

See, okay, so you're right. You just said, why does it have to be good at chess? Because if it's not good at chess, it's not as impressive.

[Dana Schwartz]

You're right. I eat my words. He mato, like, tries to buy it to, like, get it off the market. The players refuse. But, like, that's actually not a big deal. It, like, is eventually sold. It's, like, less good at chess. No one really cares about it. There's an automaton whist player that Mets.

[Lizzy Logan]

What is Wist.

[Dana Schwartz]

Like a game, I guess. A card game, I think.

[Lizzy Logan]

Never heard of this.

[Dana Schwartz]

He buys it and then take a shot, Lizzie Logan, because we're about to get a cameo P.T.

[Lizzy Logan]

Barnum.

[Dana Schwartz]

P.T. barnum. PT Barnum writes in his memoir that he meets. This is like. This is out of a movie. This really is my favorite scene.

[Lizzy Logan]

Dana is, like, wriggling around in her chair, pumping my pulse. She's like having a kniff.

[Dana Schwartz]

P.T. barnum, according to his memoirs, meets matesl at this point is the greatest showman and writes, quote, that he. P.T. barnum was pleased with Metzl's assurance that I would certainly make a successful showman. Like the beginning of the movie.

[Lizzy Logan]

You got the goods, kid.

[Dana Schwartz]

Exactly.

[Lizzy Logan]

You got the goods to trick people.

[Dana Schwartz]

One day you'll be the greatest showman. Also, the mechanical trick is kind of like Forrest Gump. Like, it just keeps appearing throughout history and meeting.

[Lizzy Logan]

And that little kid was Steve Jobs.

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, you know who it's about to meet.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay. It's already met Ben Franklin. It's already met Napoleon. It's already met P.T. barnum. It's already met a signer of the Declaration of. Well, did Ben Franklin sign the Declaration of Independence? I think so. Okay, so it's now met two signers of the Declaration of Independence. Who else could it possibly meet?

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, it goes down to Richmond, Virginia in 1835, and meets a young reporter writing for the Southern Literary messenger named Edgar Allan Poe. And Edgar Allan Poe writes this famous essay explaining how he thinks it works.

[Lizzy Logan]

Is he right?

[Dana Schwartz]

No.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay.

[Dana Schwartz]

He's close, though. He's like. It's like, pretty good. His conclusion is basically the same as that young guy Willis's, which is like the cabinet is like. There's movable partitions. It's like a trick cabinet. There's someone in there. And he does think that someone, like, moves up into the Turk's body. And he points out, he does make the very intelligent observation that you never see that Schlumberger guy in the same place as the Turk. And, you know, there was a moment when Schlumberger was ill and the Turks performances stopped. So it's like just like.

[Lizzy Logan]

And does happen to be quite short.

[Dana Schwartz]

I don't know, actually. But again, Edgar Allan Poe, people say that he's, like, famous for inventing the detective story. That's like a thing that. And like this article that he wrote, which is very interesting that I will, you know, link to in the episode description, is kind of structured and written like a detective story. It is like, here's the situation, here's my investigation. Here are my observations. Here's my conclusion. So he's kind of mastering the form. Just like another interesting cameo. Meanwhile, the tour continues around the U.S. new Orleans eventually Havana. I think Metzl realizes this time, like, with the imitator, like, look, I'm not gonna just get by on my Mechanical Turk. I need, like, my whole little museum collection. So while he's, like, working on a bigger, better version of the conflagration of Moscow, he builds, like, a diorama of the pyrrhic fires and, like, has a few other little, like, cabinet tricks, cabinet of curiosity tricks. But then, you know, things take a turn for the worst. In November of 1837, he's going on a second tour of Havana. But in the spring of that year, Schlumberger, his right hand man and secretary, dies of yellow fever. Oh, no. Yeah. It never says anywhere. And there's no evidence that they're lovers, but I like to imagine they are.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay.

[Dana Schwartz]

Cause he's really sad when he dies. The rest of Mental's company desert him. He's in debt from building his new, better conflagration of Moscow. And he's like, alone on a ship. And, like, this is like the saddest detail to me. He's on the ship coming back from Havana. The captain sees him sitting alone with a travel chess set and challenges him to a game of chess.

[Lizzy Logan]

It's like, too sad for chess.

[Dana Schwartz]

I know. And Metzl wins one game and then plays a second game and loses and is like, a bad sport about it. And, like, goes to his cabin, stays there for six days straight drinking. And then the people in the cabin in the ship find him. He died and he's buried at sea, July 18th.

[Lizzy Logan]

Oh, he died too.

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh, he dies too. On the ship.

[Lizzy Logan]

That is. That's not just sad, that's like, tragic. Yeah. Oh, man.

[Dana Schwartz]

And I will say, like, for a guy who's like a con man and plagiarist, like, people are sad when he dies. Like, it's nice obituaries. Cause he was like a good entertainer.

[Lizzy Logan]

Yeah.

[Dana Schwartz]

And this is kind of the era where it's like, it was entertainment. He wasn't like.

[Lizzy Logan]

I mean, it sounds like he was like, bad with money. Con man. Not like, promising you riches and taking your money and absconding in the night and leaving you pregnant with bad debts. Con man. And like, again, there's a difference.

[Dana Schwartz]

The goal was entertainment always. Which, like, as far as hoaxes go, I kind of always am on the side of like. Well, that's like, you know, a noble hoax. If it's like, consensual entertainment. Sure. Like a magic show.

[Lizzy Logan]

And also, I can't imagine the tickets to this cost very much.

[Dana Schwartz]

No. And I don't think people were going, like, they weren't being like, I'm going to install a chess playing robot technology in my home. You just get to like, go and be like, that's cool. And go about your day.

[Lizzy Logan]

And if you found out that it wasn't real, you wouldn't be like, my life is a lie.

[Dana Schwartz]

I do kind of think of it as like a magician, where, like, if you see a magician, like a good magic trick, you're like, I have no idea how that worked. That was great. But, like, you kind of know it's not real, but you can still be impressed.

[Lizzy Logan]

I mean, yeah, they don't saw a lady in half.

[Dana Schwartz]

I hope everybody, everyone knows that she's okay with that. As I mentioned, like, Maitel was in debt from building his new conflagration of Moscow. And like, the businessman who had loaned him money takes possession of his things, tries to auction off the Turk. No one really buys it. So he basically just buys it himself for $400, the equivalent of about like $12,000 today.

[Lizzy Logan]

Who buys it?

[Dana Schwartz]

This businessman, John Ohl, who just sort of like took possession of Matel's things. But then there's this man, John Kearsley Mitchell, who actually is Edgar Allan Poe's personal physician at this point. And he is very curious about how the Mechanical Turk works. Like, he likes the history, he thinks it's cool. And he basically crowdsources buying it so that everyone can pay to, like, see how it works. He's like, buy a ticket to, like, join my club or will buy the robot and, like, figure out how it works. Yeah, and he does. And in 1840, like, people pay either 5 or $10. He has 75, like, quote unquote subscribers. They buy the machine. Unfortunately for him, it was like, separated in a bunch of crates. Like, pieces seemed to be missing, and there's like a lot of, like, red herring pieces, like, presumably because when it was traveling place to place, they didn't want everyone who unloaded the boxes to know how it works. So it's kind of hard to put back together. It's like a tricky puzzle. But eventually he does public performances for his little club of people where they would do the performance and then show everyone how it works. He kind of loses interest at a certain point. Cause he's like, I don't want everyone coming over to my office to see how this works. We figured this out. He donated to the Philadelphia Museum, AKA known at this point as the Chinese Museum. Cause, like, once you know the secret, it's Less interesting. It's like a cool historical object, but, like, what are you gonna do with it?

[Lizzy Logan]

But I wanna know the secret.

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, it does a few occasional shows at the museum, but, like, now that there's no showman. Yeah, it's not really. No one really cares.

[Lizzy Logan]

Okay.

[Dana Schwartz]

It's relegated to the back of the museum. And then July 5, 1854, I have some really bad news.

[Lizzy Logan]

Did it burn down?

[Dana Schwartz]

A fire starts at the National Theater nearby, reaches the museum. John Mitchell's son Silas, recounts that, like, he ran to the museum to try to save it. And he, like, very romantically recounts, like, I don't know, does he, like, stream it? He does. He says that he heard it say its final words, like, eche, ecce, and it burned down. At this point, though, I'm gonna put you out of your misery because this.

[Lizzy Logan]

Is my curiosity, like, horniness for this information.

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, so Silas Weir Mitchell, the son of the guy who, like, purchased it for the club, he's like, you know what? Now that it's burned down, now that it doesn't exist, I will publish the answer. Okay, side note. Silas Weir Mitchell, the guy who. The son of the guy who publishes the Answer, is also the guy who invented the rest cure for women, which is like, if you're sick, just sit in bed and do nothing.

[Lizzy Logan]

Someone had to invent that.

[Dana Schwartz]

Well, like, it's a bad idea.

[Lizzy Logan]

I thought that was, like, ancient wisdom.

[Dana Schwartz]

Charlotte Perkins Gilman. Did you have to read the yellow wallpaper in college about that woman who goes crazy? Well, he treated her. And she wrote the short story about going nuts. Because that's not a way to treat women. Okay, that's him. He's publishing answers and also coming up with sort of Victorian cures for curing women.

[Lizzy Logan]

I do think, like, go hang out by the seaside. That's a good cure away from everyone who's bothering you is a good cure.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, but, like, sit in a bed and you can't read or interact with anyone or do any. Would be torture.

[Lizzy Logan]

No, that's bad advice.

[Dana Schwartz]

But okay, here is the answer as he publishes it. People were right about, like, details about their theories, but no one had put it all together.

[Lizzy Logan]

Yeah, it's like everybody got 5%.

[Dana Schwartz]

Everyone got kind of, like, 50%. Okay. But here's, like, kind of the amazing thing. Like, this is decades later. Like, it is almost a hundred years later that this guy invented this, like, magic trick. Really? And, like, no one figured it out, which is, like, great, good job, successful piece of entertainment.

[Lizzy Logan]

Almost like a chess move.

[Dana Schwartz]

The way it worked. Is that bottom drawer did not extend all the way back. Correct. On that inside, I'm going to try to find a picture that I think will sum this up really well. Here we go. Inside there is a sliding seat. So if you're on a seat, it slides back and forth. So there is surprise, surprise, a person inside. Someone is like crouched at the back. And when he's showing the front, Right. He's like, back. He like pulls the chair back.

[Lizzy Logan]

Basically, you're in whatever part of the box is not on display.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yes. And then when he's like displaying the bigger compartment, you pull, slide the sliding chair forward and he can open that one. And then when it closes, you can sort of sit upright. And the way it worked, it's actually kind of amazing technology because like. Okay, what is your theory of how he would know what was happening on the chess game? There's a guy sitting in the cabinet. That much we know.

[Lizzy Logan]

This is not my theory. This is my half remembered explanation from this YouTube video.

[Dana Schwartz]

Okay.

[Lizzy Logan]

Is that like, basically there was like a magnet version, I'm picturing it like upside down, of the chessboard so that they could just sort of know what was going on up there.

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean, that's the basic idea. Yeah. So what it is, what you should picture is on the roof of the box cabinet, imagine little strings holding like magnetized little discs. And all of the chess pieces have magnets in them. So when a piece is on a square, the little disc is magnetized up. And if you pick a piece up, it drops on the string. So then it would like bounce on the string. And you could be like, ah, that guy picked up that piece. And then when you put it on a new square, that little magnetized disk jumps up to magnetize.

[Lizzy Logan]

Right.

[Dana Schwartz]

So he could follow the game upside down. Yes. And then he would have his own board. Like, he would be able to move this thing that then would move the arm of the turk in a corresponding way.

[Lizzy Logan]

Like an autograph machine.

[Dana Schwartz]

An autograph machine, exactly. So you see, it's like he was able to move.

[Lizzy Logan]

So basically it's like we're talking like a series of interconnected sticks going from my hand up to the turk's hand. So that if I move my hand two inches north, its hand moves two inches north.

[Dana Schwartz]

Exactly.

[Lizzy Logan]

So I can operate it from below.

[Dana Schwartz]

And you open your hand, close the hand, open, claw, pick up, piece, clothes, claw. Exactly. Yes. And he could make, make the Turk nod. He could make him roll his eyes with little mechanisms inside. He could also just make like Generic whirring sounds like generic. Like, if he had to, like, cough or sneeze, it would make, like, machine sounds. I love to, like, cover the cough or sneeze. There was sort of a. It's not like that important, but like, a little number code system that they could twist inside, outside. Like, imagine just like a little symbol thing where, like, numbers would appear on the outside to, like, communicate little messages back and forth. To be like, my candle. And then he could come down and readjust the mechanics, relight the candle. The reason that the Turk always had a candelabra on the table wasn't just to light the game, but also to know how. No, to disguise the smoke of the other candle coming out. Which is pretty clever. And it leads to my next point that there's a lot of literature and stories about this. Cause it's very romantic. There's also this story that is unfortunately not true that says, like, okay, before Compellen built his mechanical Turk, he was in Russia working on his speaking machine. And he ran into this Polish revolutionary who had led an uprising against the Russian army, which. That was real. And he had lost his legs in battle. But he can't get out of Russia because he's a wanted man. And so while they're holed up in a cabin, Compellen realizes that he is amazing at chess. And he builds this mechanical Turk to, like, sneak him out of Russia.

[Lizzy Logan]

Oh, funny.

[Dana Schwartz]

And, like, then there's another like.

[Lizzy Logan]

But then he actually did solve a mystery and get several wrongfully imprisoned men out of jail.

[Dana Schwartz]

So, yeah, apparently. So, like, there's a lot of romantic stories. And I, you know, I think it's very, like. It raises very interesting questions about thinking and what a machine can do. Because, as you mentioned now robots can play chess. There's a very famous period where a. I'll say robot, machine, Computer. Computer is the word named. Deep Blue will play against the chess grandmaster Kasparov, and it'll beat him. And it's like a computer can now beat a grandmaster. And like, nowadays machines can play chess like they're nothing but, like. I will ask you the philosophical question, if you don't mind me taking a few moments. A lot of times those machines. I'm not an expert in computers, but at least the way Deep Blue was playing and Deep Thought, which is like, precursor, it's kind of like rote information. It knows all the possible moves, and then it sort of reads, okay, based on this position, like, here are all the possible moves I could make. Like information trees. And just There's a lot of computational power that it can store all that information and then apply it. But, like, is a computer thinking if it is playing chess, is my question to you.

[Lizzy Logan]

I mean, what is thinking?

[Dana Schwartz]

So there's a famous thought experiment.

[Lizzy Logan]

I think, therefore I am.

[Dana Schwartz]

Dana, There's a famous thought experiment I barely hear called the Chinese Room thought experiment that, like, this whole thing kind of reminds me of, which is this idea that, like, it was written in the. Did I say 1980? 1980. By a man named John Searle, who said, like, imagine you are in a room. To the best of my knowledge, you do not speak Chinese.

[Lizzy Logan]

No, but imagine you had a. I can say, nihau.

[Dana Schwartz]

Well done. Imagine you had a book that basically, like, you're in a room, someone slides a piece of paper under the door with a Chinese symbol, and you have a big old book that, like, is, like, if someone gives you this symbol, write back this symbol, and so someone writes you a Chinese symbol and slides it to you, and, like, you write the Chinese symbol back, and then they write you a different Chinese symbol, and then you figure out, read the book and send a Chinese symbol back. That person on the other side would be like, wow, this person is writing to me back and forth in Chinese. But you do not understand Chinese.

[Lizzy Logan]

So they think we're having a conversation.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, and you are.

[Lizzy Logan]

But I'm just being a little computer.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. And so the question is like. Like, I guess the philosophical argument is like, you are playing that game, but you do not understand Chinese. A computer can say, like, okay, if a piece moves here, then, like, statistically, I should move my piece here. But does that mean it, like, understands? Yeah. And I don't know. I don't. Like, this is now with questions of, like, AI. Is it just like, a lot of these, like, language models are just, like, filling in predictive text, but are they thinking. These are questions that I think philosophers are going to be reckoning with for a long time.

[Lizzy Logan]

I know, because it's also like, I won't speak for why chess players play chess. I think that depends player to player. But a lot of them are, like, they might be doing it for the love of the game. You know what I mean? I didn't understand running for a really long time where I was like, where are you going?

[Dana Schwartz]

I still don't.

[Lizzy Logan]

But it's like, oh, they just like to run. They just like to run.

[Dana Schwartz]

Is that in favor of playing chess against humans or playing against rocks?

[Lizzy Logan]

Well, I'm just like, do you have to know? Do you have to understand what a game of chess is. Isn't the act of computing what the best chess move is? That is what chess is.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzy Logan]

Regardless of the outcome.

[Dana Schwartz]

That's, that's a good argument.

[Lizzy Logan]

You know what I mean? Like that's what they like about it. The fact that they like sitting there thinking about it.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah.

[Lizzy Logan]

Not that it doesn't have a deeper meaning to those people, but it's like that's like what they enjoy about it is the pro. You know what I mean? Like swimming laps seems like so freaking boring to me. But it's like that's what swimmers like about it is the meditative like, you know what I mean?

[Dana Schwartz]

I mean this is the bigger philosophical question. Someone like John Searle would argue that like there is something more to playing chess or like understanding Chinese than just like writing the correct characters. But I think plenty of people like you would argue like no, it is the action that defines the thought process.

[Lizzy Logan]

Well like that there is something more like within that action that like the action itself, thinking through it is the.

[Dana Schwartz]

Ultimate form of it. So are you saying like chess playing computers our thinking or.

[Lizzy Logan]

No, I don't know. I think they're playing chess.

[Dana Schwartz]

They are playing chess.

[Lizzy Logan]

I think they are playing chess. I don't know if they're thinking.

[Dana Schwartz]

I think just like a funny thing about the mechanical turk is. Do you remember a Tesla we robot event in 2024 when they had Tesla bots. I guess they're called Optimus and they were electronic drinks. Yeah. But they were actually teleoperated by humans. Yes.

[Lizzy Logan]

Do you remember when Amazon tried to do a whole grocery store where you didn't have to like do checkout. Amazon just walk away.

[Dana Schwartz]

Wait, but I want to finish this point.

[Lizzy Logan]

Yes. Because I was just about to say it was the exact same thing where.

[Dana Schwartz]

Like it actually is people keeping track of it.

[Lizzy Logan]

Yes.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, it's not robots. Yeah, it's just people and it is.

[Lizzy Logan]

The same as the Tesla things and it was just. It's like the same way that RC cars work.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah. I just think it's very funny that like it's been 150 years since the mechan more than it's been 250 years since the mechanical Turk and Tesla was still doing a mechanical Turk just with like a better looking robot.

[Lizzy Logan]

I would say equally looking. I don't think those Tesla bots are particularly cool looking.

[Dana Schwartz]

Well Lizzie, that's our show. That's the story. That's the decade spanning story of the mechanical.

[Lizzy Logan]

That is an epic odyssey of Chessness. Who would you cast in the movie of this?

[Dana Schwartz]

Oh my gosh. I mean it's the obvious one. It's like I'm just thinking British period piece. But no need for it to be British. It could be anyone. Timothee Chalamet, always Timothy. Austin Butler, he has the juice.

[Lizzy Logan]

I think Austin Butler would be good as the Turk.

[Dana Schwartz]

As the Turk. He can do anything. No, he's kind of Woody Jacob Elordi can. Can do anything.

[Lizzy Logan]

Yes. He's such a good creature that is built now. And maybe Anthony Hopkins as an inventor of some kind.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, I don't mind that. It's pretty good. Lizzie, where can the good people find you?

[Lizzy Logan]

The good people can find us at hoaxthepodcast on Instagram and you can email.

[Dana Schwartz]

[e-mail] if you know how to play chess.

[Lizzy Logan]

Good for you.

[Dana Schwartz]

Yeah, let's play online. I'll make a Chess.com account and we can play. Email me. Or you know what, go on the Instagram follow us and DM us here. Chess login and I'll play you online.

[Lizzy Logan]

Yes, and I will watch.

[Dana Schwartz]

Thank you so much for listening. Please, if you like this podcast, enjoy listening to it. Please rate, review and subscribe.

[Lizzy Logan]

And please Hoax responsibly.

[Dana Schwartz]

Bye.

[Lizzy Logan]

Hoax is a production of iHeart podcasts. Our hosts are Dana Schwartz and Lizzy Logan. Our executive producers are Matt Frederick and Trevor Young with supervising producer Rima El Kayali and producers Gnomes Griffin and Jesse Bunk. Our theme music was composed by Lane Montgomery. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening.

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Your craving for a tasty and yeah, healthy snack.

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[Dana Schwartz]

Janice Torres here and I'm Austin Hankwitz.

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We host the podcast Mind the Business Small Business Success Stories produced by Ruby.

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Studio in partnership with Intuit QuickBooks.

[Dana Schwartz]

We're back for season four to talk.

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To some incredible small business owners.

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[Dana Schwartz]

Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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