It's Your Move (clank, Whirr), Mister Turk

Although chess has its "swindles"—referring to games in which a player capitalizes on a blunder by an opponent in a winning or drawn position—the incidence of actual chess cheating is rare. Championship players are keenly aware of every piece on the board, whose move it is and the time remaining, so that opportunities for genuine swindles are almost nonexistent.

Still, there was an occasion when nearly the entire chess world, not to mention such otherwise sophisticated lights as Napoleon Bonaparte, was duped by a chess hoax as resourceful as it was long-lasting. It all began in the Royal Palace in Vienna in 1770. Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen, a famous inventor, had boasted to Empress Maria Theresa that within six months he could construct a marvelous invention that would astonish and baffle everyone with its mysterious design and secret power.

And, sure enough, half a year later he was prepared to demonstrate his device in the Great Hall, not only before the members of the royal court but some of the country's finest mathematicians and intellectuals. The Baron's boast came at a time of scientific and technical sophistication throughout the world. The clock had been contrived, magnetism and gravity were well known, gunpowder had been invented, astronomy was well developed and many early steps toward controlling disease were being taken. Surely there could not be much left to discover. Still, the buzzing in the court was heated as the Baron stepped forward to make scientific history.

What he had to show and demonstrate to the assemblage, he said, was the world's first automated chess machine—or, as he called it, the Automaton Chess Player. The announcement evoked instant disbelief. It was ridiculous, the courtiers told each other, to assert that a machine could actually play anything as challenging and complex as chess. No machine could reason out all the plays and combinations that had puzzled some of the greatest minds in the world. Clearly, the Baron was making a joke. And if it were a trick, he would not be able to get away with it for long. Consequently, the audience watched with amused skepticism as the demonstration began.

First, attendants wheeled into view a chest about four feet long, three feet high and two feet wide. A chessboard was fastened to the top. Behind the cabinet was a life-size, mustachioed "Turk" wearing a turban, an Oriental costume and holding a long, thin pipe in its hand. The Baron announced, with a few courtly flourishes, that his machine—entirely unaided by any human agency—could beat any opponent who would accept the challenge. The Baron would be on hand only to wind the device from time to time. He asked for a volunteer to step forward.

The audience balked. Obviously, the crowd felt, the machine was a hoax and would be operated by someone hidden inside the cabinet, perhaps a clever dwarf or boy. Several people suggested as much and asked for permission to look inside the contraption.

The Baron willingly agreed. Indeed, he said, he had intended to open the cabinet after the first game but would be pleased to do so now if it would clear up any suspicions. While the audience watched closely, he took a key and unlocked one of the doors facing toward the audience. Inside they saw a mass of clockwork wheels, levers, narrow metal bars and pistons. Then he began to unlock two doors of a larger compartment on the other side but stopped suddenly and asked for a lighted candle.

Because there was so much machinery in the opened section, the inventor said, he wanted his audience to know for certain that no one could be hiding behind it. He now opened a door in the rear of the cabinet and held the candle up so the audience could see no one was inside. Then he shut the rear door, walked around to the front and opened a drawer in the bottom of the cabinet. It contained only chessmen. He left it open as he swung out the two cabinet doors he had started to open before. More machinery. He opened the back door and again held up the lighted candle so the audience could see all the way through.

Now the inventor took the desklike cabinet, which was on casters, and swung it around to show the Turk's back. He lifted the robe, and the spectators could see it contained only wheels and machinery with no space for a person. With the doors and drawer open and with the Turk's robe lifted up over its head, the Baron rolled the cabinet around the room, permitting careful inspection, and returned it to its original place in front of the apparently satisfied audience.

The Baron took the pipe from the Turk's hand, then placed a cushion under the left elbow, set up the chessmen on the board and wound up the machine with a key, much as one would wind a clock. The device began to click. A volunteer stepped up, and the game began.