A: Centuries before supercomputer Deep Blue showed Russian grandmasters who was boss, a chess-playing automaton nicknamed “the Turk” made similar mincemeat of a host of opponents.
Atop a wheeled wooden cabinet was a seated, life-sized mannequin made of wood and dressed in Turkish garb. The Turk held a chessboard in his wooden lap, and he beat almost all comers – including Napoléon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin.
Premiering in the 1770s, the creation of Wolfgang von Kempelen moved its wooden arms, seemingly without human assistance, around the board. The secret? The Turk’s arms were operated by a diminutive chess expert crouched inside the cabinet, who operated gears and pulleys to move the Turk’s arms. After traveling the world for almost a century, the Turk ended up mothballed in Philadelphia – where it was destroyed in a fire in 1854.
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