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The Turk
chess automaton hoax / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Turk, also known as the Mechanical Turk or Automaton Chess Player was a trick chess-playing machine. First put on show in 1770, the machine was in use until it was destroyed in a fire in 1854. It was later found to be a hoax.[1] It was built in 1770 by Wolfgang von Kempelen to impress the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria. The machine could play chess against a human. It could also perform the knight's tour, a puzzle where a player moves a knight to every square of a chessboard exactly once.
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The Turk was not a real machine, but a mechanical illusion. There was a person inside the machine working the controls. With a skilled chess player hidden inside the box, the Turk won most of the games. It played and won games against many people including Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin. The chess players who secretly worked inside the box included Johann Allgaier, Hyacinthe Henri Boncourt, Aaron Alexandre, William Lewis, Jacques Mouret, and William Schlumberger.