Speaker 1: You're listening to Hoax, a production of iHeart podcasts.
Speaker 2: Folks, it's a hug.
Speaker 1: No, I haven't seen when us to see the Welcome
Speaker 1: to Hoax, a podcast about the lies we wish were true.
Speaker 2: And truths that sound like lies. I'm the ghost of
Speaker 2: Danish Wartz, and I'm the evil twin of Lizzie Logan.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the show, Lizzie. Are you a chess player? No? I,
Speaker 2: at the very beginning of this year learned the basic
Speaker 2: rules of how each of the pieces moved. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's step one, and that is the entirety of my
Speaker 2: chess career.
Speaker 1: I like playing chess, and I like the aesthetics of chess.
Speaker 1: I like studying chess like I love doing like tutorials
Speaker 1: and puzzles online. But I'm not good at chess at
Speaker 1: all because I'm too impatient. I just like moving the pieces.
Speaker 2: I like the word chess. Yeah, and I am a
Speaker 2: huge Abba fan, and therefore I have some affection for
Speaker 2: the musical Chess.
Speaker 1: Should we go to New Should we plan a hoax
Speaker 1: trip to New York to see a loosely associated, very
Speaker 1: tangential production of Chess.
Speaker 2: Sure?
Speaker 1: All of this is to say this episode involves chess, yes,
Speaker 1: but it does not require any knowledge of how the
Speaker 1: game works except that it is, you know, a game
Speaker 1: of wits.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean I feel like it's like, if
Speaker 2: you don't know what chess is, it's really it's a
Speaker 2: board game and it's really hard, and it's really old,
Speaker 2: and it's black pieces and white pieces. But I think
Speaker 2: we can assume that all the listeners know what chess is. Well,
Speaker 2: here's another question.
Speaker 1: Do you does it mean anything if I say mechanical
Speaker 1: turk to you?
Speaker 2: Okay, So here's here's the thing, Dana, Yeah, I know
Speaker 2: this one. Yeah, and I know what it actually was.
Speaker 1: Well, what do you think it was? Or what do
Speaker 1: you think it is?
Speaker 2: The hoax? I mean, could like all of it?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't think you're going to get it right, Okay,
Speaker 3: because I watched, like, I watched a YouTube video about
Speaker 3: cheating scandals in chess, okay, and they covered this one
Speaker 3: and they said that it was and we can edit
Speaker 3: this out if I'm about to ruin the episode.
Speaker 1: It's a lot more convoluted, I think than you're gonna get.
Speaker 2: Okay. Well, yeah, okay, obviously, because you said this was
Speaker 2: a long episode, but what what the YouTuber Sarah z
Speaker 2: Ed said was that it was chess masters crouched underneath
Speaker 2: just playing chess against whoever was playing chess against the
Speaker 2: like quote unquote automaton and moving the like above ground
Speaker 2: pieces with magnets, like just playing chess by candlelight.
Speaker 1: So that's like seventy percent right, Okay, because spoiler alert,
Speaker 1: this is a hoax. Yes, I'm gonna We're gonna get
Speaker 1: off the you know, get off the bat and say
Speaker 1: this is a podcast called hoax.
Speaker 4: This is a hoax.
Speaker 1: Yes, but we're going to get into deeper and I
Speaker 1: think actually pretty philosophical questions about and if a robot
Speaker 1: can play chess.
Speaker 2: So at a tart.
Speaker 1: This is an episode about a man named Wolfgang von Kempelin.
Speaker 1: Some people falsely say that he's a baron.
Speaker 2: He's not.
Speaker 1: He's related to a baron, but like if you ever
Speaker 1: see that, you're like, this person doesn't know what they're
Speaker 1: talking about. And he created an automaton that he claimed
Speaker 1: could play chess.
Speaker 2: And he well, he also claimed it was an automaton. Yeah,
Speaker 2: he created like a puppet. Basically, we're going to get in.
Speaker 2: I'm getting ahead of you, Okay, I'll just let you.
Speaker 2: I'll let you be the co host of this podcast.
Speaker 1: So let me place you now in the seventeen hundreds. Okay,
Speaker 1: Industrial Revolution. Everything ell is terrible. Yeah, everyone smells horrible.
Speaker 1: No one's taking enough baths, breath everywhere, no deodorant, The
Speaker 1: dusteral revolution is happening, and people are getting excited by automatons. Basically,
Speaker 1: I mean quite literally, Like when I say automaton, what
Speaker 1: you're picturing like a jerky machine that's sometimes humanoid like
Speaker 1: doing things like that is correct, this kind of I
Speaker 1: could get into so much more detail, but because we
Speaker 1: have to focus this episode. It's sort of like a
Speaker 1: an evolution from medieval clocks.
Speaker 2: If you picture like.
Speaker 1: A medieval clock tower, eventually like figurines came out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like a cuckoo clock.
Speaker 1: Okay, yeah, so like basically what happened I'm like racing
Speaker 1: through this in the Western world. Eventually what happened was
Speaker 1: clockmakers began making smaller and smaller automata for like clocks
Speaker 1: for rich people that it's like it hits twelve and
Speaker 1: like a little person comes out and does something. And
Speaker 1: then eventually these clockmakers built just like autonom automata for
Speaker 1: rich people to like entertain themselves, okay, and they kind
Speaker 1: of became like sometimes they were like mechanical pictures with
Speaker 1: moving parts, or like mechanical like things for your table,
Speaker 1: like that could pour tea on their own.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like in the opening of Wallace and Gromitt where
Speaker 2: he can like put his pants on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like that, but much smaller, and for rich people
Speaker 1: to like put in their cabinets of curiosities. O.
Speaker 4: Cool.
Speaker 1: And most of these end up in the collection of
Speaker 1: kings and queens and emperors, which is which encourages engineers
Speaker 1: to do this sort of thing, because if you were
Speaker 1: like an engineer who wants to like win favor of
Speaker 1: a king or queen, you like make them a fun
Speaker 1: little gift.
Speaker 2: I like sucks that we don't do this anymore, Like
Speaker 2: I'm sure someone is. I'm just like, why hasn't anyone
Speaker 2: ever gotten in one of these?
Speaker 1: Well, so, the kind of father of the biomechanical automaton
Speaker 1: like automatons that were meant to like look like people
Speaker 1: is a guy named Jacques de Vaczon who makes three
Speaker 1: kind of very famous automaton in seventeen thirty eight, one
Speaker 1: that can play a flute, yeah, like fake lungs. So okay,
Speaker 1: he's blowing and it is playing the flute, so I
Speaker 1: guess we.
Speaker 2: Do still have them. They're just sex dolls. Okay. Sorry
Speaker 2: you said blowing and I was like, yeah, yeah, blowing.
Speaker 2: Point Okay. He can make one that has like do
Speaker 2: you have to pump it or does it have like
Speaker 2: a little battery.
Speaker 1: Basically most of them work the way grandfather clocks work
Speaker 1: with weight you act like, I know you have grandfather clops,
Speaker 1: but like weighted okay, and you have to wind it up.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: He also makes a boy with a pipe and a
Speaker 1: drum so like playing music okay. And then he makes
Speaker 1: what he thinks is his ps their resistance, this duck
Speaker 1: that can simulate digestion, like you feed it bread crumbs
Speaker 1: and then it would excrete. I'm gonna say, like like
Speaker 1: breadcrumb poop.
Speaker 2: Okay, I mean that would be like interesting, and.
Speaker 1: Like imagine if you see like a mechanical duck that
Speaker 1: you can actually feed bread crumbs and then like it
Speaker 1: poops out like green pell watery.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: The thing I want to note here is it didn't
Speaker 1: it wasn't actually real. He was claiming that it was
Speaker 1: like digesting and I'm putting that in air quote digesting
Speaker 1: the pellets, but really it just happened.
Speaker 2: There was two other it was it's like how baby
Speaker 2: dolls work, where it's you feed it baby food and
Speaker 2: some and then like you like change the diaper. But
Speaker 2: really it's that like you're putting one thing in, you're
Speaker 2: putting in substance A, and then substance B is coming in. Exactly.
Speaker 1: There was a pre set chamber with like green food diet,
Speaker 1: not food die, but like green dyed pellets. Yeah, came
Speaker 1: out as the poop. So it's interesting and it's cool,
Speaker 1: but actually, you know, we'll dismember the prestige. The prestige
Speaker 1: is happening. Although very interestingly, this man did kind of
Speaker 1: invent the first flexible rubber tube in order to build
Speaker 1: the like quote unquote intestines. So actually good scientific and
Speaker 1: important things are being developed in service of these I
Speaker 1: don't know, like toy toys, yeah, entertainments.
Speaker 2: Okay, okay, go off tube tube guy.
Speaker 1: But he sort of causes this, sir of public interest
Speaker 1: in automata. If you're an engineer, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: a fun challenge, especially if you're trying to at this
Speaker 1: point understand how humans work, like we're they're still understanding
Speaker 1: like biology, and so they're kind of scientists scientists, I'm
Speaker 1: using you loosely, but like these engineers are kind of
Speaker 1: using automata to explore what they can figure out about
Speaker 1: how humans work. Like the guy, this guy making a
Speaker 1: flute playing automaton was interested in like lung pressure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, totally. I mean if you can, cause eventually
Speaker 2: we're gonna get like someone's going to make a pacemaker.
Speaker 2: So yeah, you know, it's all progress.
Speaker 1: But like that actually is the thesis of the episode,
Speaker 1: that like people are doing weird, little interesting things and
Speaker 1: it is progress, you know.
Speaker 2: What, Like some a lot of things are made by
Speaker 2: people like fucking around.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but correct and keep that in mind. Okay, we're
Speaker 1: going to focus on this guy named Wolfgang von Kempelein.
Speaker 1: He was born in seventy thirty four and he's a
Speaker 1: bureaucrat in the court of Maria Theresa of Austria. And
Speaker 1: if that name kind of sounds familiar, it's because she's
Speaker 1: Marie Antoinette's mom. Yes, So Wolfgang is this sort of
Speaker 1: notably handsome man. He speaks several languages. He's charming. He's
Speaker 1: sort of this like rising star in the bureaucracy. He
Speaker 1: has this translation job translating the Hungarian civil Code from
Speaker 1: Latin to German, which is now the new official language
Speaker 1: of the Austro Hungarian Empire, and he does it in
Speaker 1: just a few days, which astonishes people, and everyone's so
Speaker 1: impressed by him. And he gets a job as a
Speaker 1: counselor to the Imperial court. He loves tinkering, and now
Speaker 1: that he's sort of a successful bureaucrat, he has enough
Speaker 1: money to kind of afford his science hobby. He gets
Speaker 1: sort of jobs with the government as a comptroller of
Speaker 1: salt mines in Transylvania and comes up with a system
Speaker 1: of pumps to drain the minds when they flood, which
Speaker 1: seems very valuable. He designed waterworks for a castle in Presburg,
Speaker 1: which is the capital of Hungary now Bratislava. He is
Speaker 1: coordinating the settlement of this mountainous region in Hungary called Banat,
Speaker 1: which is like designing the houses and like planning the villages,
Speaker 1: like literally planning the settlement. And I do want to
Speaker 1: point out in this book that I read about this
Speaker 1: whole subject called the mechanical Turk by Tom Standage. There
Speaker 1: is the best sentence just out of context. And I
Speaker 1: want to stress this sentence has no more context on
Speaker 1: either the front or back. We never find out anything more.
Speaker 1: There's no footnote. I could not find anything else about this.
Speaker 2: Tom, get in touch with the podcast and let us
Speaker 2: know more about this sentence.
Speaker 1: So while he's, you know, coordinating this settlement, we get
Speaker 1: this sentence. Quote. While in Banat, he solved a local mystery,
Speaker 1: freeing several wrongly imprisoned men from jail.
Speaker 2: Hey, great, vague, vague great. I would like to know
Speaker 2: what they were in prison for.
Speaker 1: I would love to know what the local mystery is. Tom,
Speaker 1: if you're listening, please let me know if anyone knows
Speaker 1: any information on the local mystery he solved. That sounds
Speaker 1: like a mini series, a Hulu TV show.
Speaker 2: I would watch.
Speaker 4: This guy.
Speaker 2: Sounds like like a local folk hero of just like
Speaker 2: he just he just wanders through town like tinkering the
Speaker 2: way and fixing up little things and Sullivan mysteries.
Speaker 1: And bringing innocent men from prison.
Speaker 2: Or yeah, like a like like he should be the
Speaker 2: star of a CBS procedural.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, the Automaton maker.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So now fast forward It's seventeen sixty nine and Marie
Speaker 1: Race of Austria invites Kemperln to her palace in Vienna
Speaker 1: to see a performance by this famous French illusionist, Francois Pelletier.
Speaker 1: And she invite Kemperland because in addition to just like
Speaker 1: being a wandering good Samaritan, he's known as kind of
Speaker 1: a good explainer of popular science. He's kind of like
Speaker 1: the Carl Sagan of his day, or like he would
Speaker 1: be a great podcaster.
Speaker 2: Is he almost like sort of like a MythBuster?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, she literally brings him because he's like conversational, and
Speaker 1: she wants to know how these tricks are going.
Speaker 4: To be done.
Speaker 1: Okay, and these quote unquote like magic tricks are going
Speaker 1: to be based in science, because at this point, if
Speaker 1: you're like a magician or illusionist, you're really gonna want
Speaker 1: to stress that you're working with quote white magic as
Speaker 1: opposed to black magic.
Speaker 2: Right, You're like, I'm doing an illusion. It's magical from science,
Speaker 2: not from I'm into the devil. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So we don't know exactly what magic tricks Pelletaier performs.
Speaker 1: We know that they're quote magnetic games. Kemperland is not impressed,
Speaker 1: He publicly in front of the entire court says I
Speaker 1: will return within a year with an invention far better
Speaker 1: than anything this French guy has, and Maria Teresa actually
Speaker 1: excuses him from his job for six months to go
Speaker 1: do it and to go build an automaton more impressive
Speaker 1: than anything this guy's showing you, which like great way
Speaker 1: to get a sabbatical.
Speaker 2: That is such a good like Babe Ruth calling a shot,
Speaker 2: Kennedy being like we're going to go to the moon,
Speaker 2: We're going to go to the moon. I'm making you
Speaker 2: an automaton, Queen Marie.
Speaker 1: And it really is like a matter of national pride
Speaker 1: at this point, Yeah, to like show like, well Austrians
Speaker 1: can do this better than French people.
Speaker 2: Yes, So six months.
Speaker 1: Later he comes back to the Palace in seventeen seventy
Speaker 1: with this automaton.
Speaker 2: And it's also a classic recipe for someone's gonna lie,
Speaker 2: you know what I mean, because you've now set yourself
Speaker 2: a high bar that it's going to be so embarrassing
Speaker 2: if you don't clear it, that you've left yourself no
Speaker 2: wiggle room that if you can't clear it, you're gonna lie.
Speaker 1: Well, I want to actually be a little like in
Speaker 1: defense of the hoax. This was in response to a
Speaker 1: magic act.
Speaker 2: Okay, right, So he saw this.
Speaker 1: Impressive magic act and he's like, I can explain how
Speaker 1: you're doing all of this.
Speaker 2: I'm not impressed.
Speaker 1: He comes back, he says, I'm gonna come back with
Speaker 1: something more impressive, and I will say, inarguably he does.
Speaker 2: Okay, he comes back with a with a better hoax. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so he comes back. I'm going to describe this to you.
Speaker 2: It's a humanoid figure wearing a turban with a black beard,
Speaker 2: wearing Ottoman robes. So it's he's known as the Mechanical Turk.
Speaker 2: And it's not only because it was like considered exotic,
Speaker 2: like Turkish people. At this point in Vienna, people were
Speaker 2: drinking Turkish coffee and having servants wear Turkish costumes.
Speaker 1: It was very stylish. But also chess was popularized in
Speaker 1: Persia and had spread throughout the Muslim world, so there's
Speaker 1: also this sort of like chess association. Interesting with the
Speaker 1: Ottoman dress that the quote unquote mechanical Turk is wearing.
Speaker 1: So it's a humanoid figure sitting at this cabinet that's
Speaker 1: four feet long, two and a half feet deep and
Speaker 1: three feet high, and it's on brass casters so it
Speaker 1: can move and swivel around. The front of the cabinet
Speaker 1: has three doors and a large drawer underneath. So I'm
Speaker 1: showing Lizzie a picture.
Speaker 2: It kind of looks like we'll put it on Instagram,
Speaker 2: but it's one drawer that pulls out.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: The left arm holds when it's not playing, holds a
Speaker 1: long smoking pipe. The right arm is at the on
Speaker 1: the top of the cabinet and it will use its
Speaker 1: left arm to play chess, so that the smoking pipe
Speaker 1: is just decorative.
Speaker 2: So and the right arm is decorative. Is decorative.
Speaker 1: Ok, it's not going to be used. So he wheels
Speaker 1: in this automaton and announces to the court that he
Speaker 1: made an automaton that can play chess. Now, up until
Speaker 1: this point, automaton technology had come pretty far. Automaton could
Speaker 1: play musical instruments and play multiple musical like play multiple
Speaker 1: songs on musical instruments, like there were I'm going to
Speaker 1: use the word robots, but like robots that could play
Speaker 1: the flute and like play different songs based on how
Speaker 1: you again like quote unquote programmed, but like basically using
Speaker 1: music box technology, like you know, so like people don't
Speaker 1: know exactly everything automatons can do because we're still figuring
Speaker 1: it out. So people are I think, probably, if not
Speaker 1: immediately skeptical, then like curious because maybe they're automaton can't
Speaker 1: play chess.
Speaker 2: And also like what does play chess mean? You know
Speaker 2: what I mean? Like to play chess and to be
Speaker 2: good at chess are two very different things. Like I
Speaker 2: can imagine someone maybe not at this time, but like
Speaker 2: if you told me that someone with some sort of
Speaker 2: rudimentary programming device made a little machine that could move
Speaker 2: all of the pieces in the way that the different
Speaker 2: pieces move, I would be like, yeah, that's not that
Speaker 2: many different functions. There's what like ten different pieces in
Speaker 2: chess that like that, that's not that many different functions.
Speaker 2: That's different from knowing. That's different from being able to
Speaker 2: understand and process how the other person has moved their
Speaker 2: pieces and then what the rules are for you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, likes keep them all in mind. That's
Speaker 2: different Like I could like move upon and move a
Speaker 2: night and move a castle and that that counts as
Speaker 2: playing chess, but like understanding how many moves away from
Speaker 2: checkmate I am like playing a full game of chess
Speaker 2: is different, so like to play chess, like, you know,
Speaker 2: let's get real philosophical, we will get philosophical.
Speaker 1: So basically he wheels in this automaton. I think most
Speaker 1: people are thinking exactly what Lizzie positive at the beginning
Speaker 1: of this episode, that like, well, there's a big old cabinet,
Speaker 1: a guy's just tucked inside there, right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and again I posited that based on a YouTube. Okay,
Speaker 2: so I cited my sources and I did that's like
Speaker 2: based on me being a scholar.
Speaker 1: Based on YouTube. So part of the presentation of the
Speaker 1: Mechanical Turk is kind of a performance. So how the
Speaker 1: performance begins is compelling. Comes over to the cabinet and
Speaker 1: at first he just unlocks the left hand side and
Speaker 1: he shows the left hand cabinet opens and there's like
Speaker 1: clockwork machinery inside and sort of like the circular cylinder
Speaker 1: that was used in like music playing automaton at the time,
Speaker 1: So like the machinery would kind of look familiar to
Speaker 1: some people clockwork machinery. And he would walk around the
Speaker 1: back of the machine and hold open another little door
Speaker 1: and hold a candle up in the back to show
Speaker 1: like nothing behind there. Then he would close that, open
Speaker 1: up the big bottom drawer and show inside there's a
Speaker 1: you know, chess pieces that he would pull out, and
Speaker 1: there was a pillow that then went under the automaton's elbow.
Speaker 1: And then you're probably thinking like, oh, well, then the
Speaker 1: person's probably hiding in the other big container. Well that's
Speaker 1: when you know the show continues asked and answered. Then
Speaker 1: he would open the big section, the last like two
Speaker 1: thirds right section of the cabinet and show that it
Speaker 1: was mostly empty if you thought a person was in there.
Speaker 1: It's like mostly lined with dark cloth. There's some like
Speaker 1: general mechanics, there's a red cushion, and there's a wooden
Speaker 1: box that then he like pulls out so and he
Speaker 1: would also spin the whole thing around to be like
Speaker 1: see nothing to see here. He lifts up the figure's
Speaker 1: robe from behind to show like there's machinery behind it,
Speaker 1: spin it around on its casters, and then put everything
Speaker 1: back in place and say, everyone got a good look,
Speaker 1: let's go.
Speaker 2: I mean, this is like literally what magicians do before
Speaker 2: they saw a lady in half. This is the exact same,
Speaker 2: the exact same thing of like there's nothing in the box,
Speaker 2: like this is a there's an exact way you do this.
Speaker 2: It's a magic trick.
Speaker 1: What part of the process is now is he takes
Speaker 1: out a candelabra, puts it on top, lights it. He's
Speaker 1: holding this wooden box that he'll occasionally just kind of
Speaker 1: like look in, so you're like, what's going on with
Speaker 1: that box? And he invites someone to play chess with it.
Speaker 1: A count Count Kobunzel will be the first opponent. And
Speaker 1: what kind of happened is you move your piece. He
Speaker 1: will ask you to try to move your piece exactly
Speaker 1: to the center of each square to make it easier
Speaker 1: for the automaton, because it will move its left hand
Speaker 1: and like use its hand like kind of like a
Speaker 1: claw machine to like pick up the pieces.
Speaker 2: And move them.
Speaker 1: And it will it will play a game of chess
Speaker 1: using its like mechanical arm, and if you moved the
Speaker 1: incorrect piece, it would shake its head and then move
Speaker 1: your piece back to where it was supposed to be.
Speaker 1: It the machine would nod twice if it checked to
Speaker 1: your if it threatened your queen, and then three times
Speaker 1: if it checked your king. Eventually, later in the life
Speaker 1: of this machine, it will actually say check and then
Speaker 1: eventually check in French. And it could also roll ittize,
Speaker 1: which is very funny. That is my favorite detail. As
Speaker 1: I mentioned before, Kemberland would like move around during this
Speaker 1: performance every few moves and not at regular intervals. He
Speaker 1: would like come and rewind it up. He would like
Speaker 1: look in this box he was holding sometimes and he
Speaker 1: would just like walk around the room. He would let
Speaker 1: observers take big magnets nearby to show like, not you
Speaker 1: can disturb this with magnets. That's not how I'm doing this,
Speaker 1: and let it. Let it play chess. In addition to
Speaker 1: actually playing full games of chess, it could do this
Speaker 1: thing called the Night's Tour, which is like a chess
Speaker 1: puzzle trick where you can put a knight on any
Speaker 1: piece of the board and the goal is to try
Speaker 1: to get it to touch every piece, every square of
Speaker 1: the board only once.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, So it's like a math puzzle. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: it could do that. That's the type of thing that
Speaker 2: I would have been like as a kid. You could
Speaker 2: have kept me occupied for a couple of hours trying
Speaker 2: to do that. And it's also like as a computer game,
Speaker 2: and it's also.
Speaker 1: The kind of thing that like you're like, I could
Speaker 1: see an automaton being able to do this.
Speaker 2: Well, once somebody figured it out, you could just program
Speaker 2: an automaton to do that series of moves, like it
Speaker 2: wouldn't have to think, it would just do the same
Speaker 2: one every time. Yeah, but actually if you picked a
Speaker 2: different disquence, okay, okay, okay, yeah, it's like the audience
Speaker 2: could pick.
Speaker 1: So during this first performance, he also does something. He
Speaker 1: lets the automaton do something that like pretty quickly he'll
Speaker 1: remove from the performance, which is letting it like speak
Speaker 1: using a letter board, like a wheezy board like cast
Speaker 1: get questions and it would answer, but like pretty quickly,
Speaker 1: he's like gilding the lily. This is just a chess
Speaker 1: playing robot. So that gets retired pretty quick.
Speaker 2: Because if it can talk, then it's just like a oh,
Speaker 2: you've invented like a whole person. Yeah you're like you're.
Speaker 1: Actually again like this podcast is called hoax. This is
Speaker 1: a hoax. I think Templeon realized, Like okay, if I'm
Speaker 1: also positive that it can answer questions like let's just.
Speaker 2: Think what you know what I mean, like where is
Speaker 2: where does this end?
Speaker 1: It's a chess robot, So the so unsurprisingly is a
Speaker 1: massive success. People cannot figure out how he did it.
Speaker 1: People think he actually he invented a chess playing robot.
Speaker 2: Well, because this is so smart, because it's not just
Speaker 2: a magic trick. It's also like can you beat this
Speaker 2: robot in chess? And there's a competition element.
Speaker 1: And it's not just can you solve that this isn't true.
Speaker 1: There's also we're at the exact stage of history where
Speaker 1: you're like, maybe you can make a robot that plays chess.
Speaker 2: And also just are you good enough to beat the robot?
Speaker 2: Like yeah, there's two Like for smart people, there's like
Speaker 2: three different games to play, Like one of them's chess,
Speaker 2: the other is like how does this work? And then
Speaker 2: the other one is like does this work? Does this?
Speaker 2: Is this real?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So it becomes a massive success. The Empress loves it,
Speaker 1: makes Kempellon do a bunch of appearances, and it becomes
Speaker 1: the talk of basically Europe because people at court write
Speaker 1: letters describing it.
Speaker 2: And you don't even need to. Another reason to not
Speaker 2: have it talk is that it doesn't need to speak
Speaker 2: a language.
Speaker 1: Everybody speaks speaks chess, and people are like arguing in
Speaker 1: public letters to newspapers about whether it's even possible to
Speaker 1: have a machine play chess. One guy writes that, like,
Speaker 1: obviously there's a guy in the cabinet, and then another
Speaker 1: guy writes back, that's like, no, I saw it inside
Speaker 1: the cabinet. It is not big enough for even a
Speaker 1: small child or a monkey. And that's important because there
Speaker 1: was a report at this time that the Sultan of
Speaker 1: Baghdad had a chess playing monkey. So you're like, maybe
Speaker 1: I have a tiny monkey inside, but it just does
Speaker 1: not seem physically possible to have a person in there.
Speaker 1: Publication of these letters goes to you know, French newspapers.
Speaker 1: The Empress brings Kempelland back from his posting in Bana,
Speaker 1: where presumably he was solving other local mysteries, and she
Speaker 1: gives him an additional allow no one's basically doubling his
Speaker 1: salary and like gives him a bunch of engineering tasks
Speaker 1: like he mission accomplished. Okay, now he's at court, like
Speaker 1: making hydraulic systems, like elaborate mechanical beds, Like he wants
Speaker 1: to be someone who's like doing science, and like she's like,
Speaker 1: you nailed this automaton entertainment. Here's double your salary dream job.
Speaker 2: Can you imagine being the French magician who did such
Speaker 2: a lackluster trick that in response, this guy like changed Europe.
Speaker 1: Truly and like publicly, like I did this because this
Speaker 1: guy's magic fucking sucks. Yes, Kemperlan tries to distance himself
Speaker 1: from the Turk at this point, like it did its
Speaker 1: job and it was a stepping stone for him to
Speaker 1: do more science work. And he now he's doing work
Speaker 1: that he's like more excited by. He's trying to work
Speaker 1: on a typewriter that blind people can use, and he's
Speaker 1: very interested in a machine that can imitate the human voice.
Speaker 2: He's just like he's like trying to help the deaf
Speaker 2: in the Yeah, it's kind of like he.
Speaker 1: Used this to get his name out there and now
Speaker 1: he's doing the things.
Speaker 2: It's like a parent.
Speaker 1: Imagine someone making a parody Twitter account in college that
Speaker 1: they're like, great, I got my name out there, and now.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna do like more work. I'm proud of that
Speaker 2: sort of thing that would never happen. Imagine that the
Speaker 2: heyday of twenty fourteen.
Speaker 1: So there's this gap of several years where the mechanical
Speaker 1: Church just doesn't play in seventeen seventy four, there's the
Speaker 1: Scottish nobleman named Sir Robert Murray who basically insists on
Speaker 1: playing and he writes these letters and Kempelland's like it's broken,
Speaker 1: it needs to be maintained, and he's like, no, no,
Speaker 1: I insist. He writes that he and like fifteen other
Speaker 1: scotsmen come to the scientist's house to play, and then
Speaker 1: he comments, he writes that, like quote, the automaton had
Speaker 1: been dismounted for some years because I suppose it took
Speaker 1: up too much of the gentleman's time. So again Kimpellan
Speaker 1: is like, I'm a civil servant, I'm an engineer'roud of
Speaker 1: the fact that I made this thing and no one
Speaker 1: has correctly guessed how it works. But this isn't like
Speaker 1: what my what, I'm my main interest. Yeah okay yeah.
Speaker 1: But then Maria Teresa dies and the new emperor is
Speaker 1: her son, Joseph the Second, and it's a little tricky
Speaker 1: when you're a civil servant who's like had been given
Speaker 1: a big bonus by like a patron who liked you,
Speaker 1: and now she's not in power anymore, so you know,
Speaker 1: he wants to make Joseph the Second. Happy Joseph the
Speaker 1: Second has this visit coming up from Grand Duke Paul
Speaker 1: of Russia, who's the son of Catherine the Great. They
Speaker 1: need entertainment. They want to like show off how smart
Speaker 1: Austria is, and so they're like, hey, wasn't there that
Speaker 1: like mechanical chess playing Turk?
Speaker 2: Like why don't we get that?
Speaker 1: Everybody liked it like that, So he resurrects the mechanical Turk.
Speaker 2: You know what it is. It's like if you're really
Speaker 2: known for like being pee wee, you're like, I'm going
Speaker 2: to do other acting roles and it's like you can.
Speaker 2: That's not what people want to see, but like you can.
Speaker 2: We want you to play the hits.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the new and then when the new Emperor
Speaker 1: tells you to play the hits, you play that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he comes back with the Chess Player and it
Speaker 1: is a still a huge and it's so success every
Speaker 1: nostalgia like yeah.
Speaker 5: The Turk, yeah, I remember, and I still can't figure
Speaker 5: out how it works.
Speaker 1: And it's such a big hit that Joseph the Second
Speaker 1: insists on a two year European tour. He's like, you
Speaker 1: are no more bureaucratic due it's a mandatory sabbatical. And
Speaker 1: again it's like he has to do it because it's
Speaker 1: the emperor.
Speaker 2: It's like a Dina Menzel. You're singing let it Go.
Speaker 2: I don't care if you can hit the notes. You
Speaker 2: are we were trying. You are singing let it go.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's almost as if the automaton has a life
Speaker 1: of its own, so he wants it to tour around Europe.
Speaker 1: Paris is the logical first step because it's sort of
Speaker 1: the chess capital of Europe. The trip begins in April
Speaker 1: of seventeen.
Speaker 2: They ever go to Turkey. No, No, that's so rude.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it stops at Versailles and it's so popular there
Speaker 1: they stay longer than expected, and they go to Paris,
Speaker 1: where it's on display. Spectators are charged like a small
Speaker 1: admission fee. It will lose a game occasionally. It loses
Speaker 1: to this man named mister Bernard, and he is a
Speaker 1: second rank player, which sounds bad. Your second rank, Well.
Speaker 2: I mean, but out of how many ranks, well.
Speaker 1: I was, there were only five second rank players and
Speaker 1: only two first rank players.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like like tennis, where like to even get
Speaker 2: a rank you have to be like real gu yeah exactly.
Speaker 1: So throughout the Mechanical Tricks life, it will lose a
Speaker 1: handful of games, but it will win so many more. Okay,
Speaker 1: so it's like, you know, keeps when it loses, it's notable.
Speaker 2: Okay, So that's like bragging rights. It's like I beat
Speaker 2: that robot. Yeah exactly. Like I know, we know the
Speaker 2: name of this guy, like a lawyer. We know who
Speaker 2: he is. Oh, good job.
Speaker 1: It keeps going throughout the summer. People are writing letters
Speaker 1: about it. It stays at the Cafe de la Regions,
Speaker 1: which is like the chess cafe where people played.
Speaker 2: Oh I thought you meant that, like it stayed there
Speaker 2: as a hotel And I was like, you mean the
Speaker 2: guy who made it stayed there. I was like, did
Speaker 2: get its own room?
Speaker 1: Like no, it got its own box? Yeah, but no,
Speaker 1: it's like this is like the cafe stood up there.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so there's a legendary player named Leagal who's one
Speaker 1: of the first ranked players, and it loses to him.
Speaker 1: But everyone really wanted to play this legendary player named Philidor.
Speaker 1: That's like the the match of the century. Everyone wants to.
Speaker 2: See yon Yeah okay, yeah.
Speaker 1: I was gonna say ten Jennings versus Watson.
Speaker 2: Whatever. Didn't Watson play chess? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think, okay, no, no, Well we'll get to that
Speaker 1: a little.
Speaker 2: I want to see the automaton play Watson.
Speaker 1: It's the deep thought playing casparovn chess.
Speaker 2: We'll get there, okay.
Speaker 1: So Philidor is this amazing French player. He took on
Speaker 1: three opponents at once while blindfolded, which seems insane.
Speaker 2: I think, once you're that good at chess, like being
Speaker 2: able to see the board kind of doesn't matter, so
Speaker 2: I think they like to do it blindfolded just to
Speaker 2: be like.
Speaker 1: Tee he Well, he won. It was two wins in
Speaker 1: one draw in case you're curious, and Philadora for him,
Speaker 1: plays the Turk. Philidor does win, Yeah, but he later
Speaker 1: says it was a really hard time. And he says
Speaker 1: that it was pretty terrifying.
Speaker 2: And I'm not sure if it.
Speaker 1: Was because it was hard playing chess or it's just
Speaker 1: kind of like weird and scary to look at. Like
Speaker 1: maybe he thought it was terrifying just because it was
Speaker 1: like scary.
Speaker 2: Well, I feel like both, like if you were I mean,
Speaker 2: at this point, these people, chess is their full time job, right,
Speaker 2: So like, if you are just used to going human
Speaker 2: a human like kind of playing anything except a human
Speaker 2: would probably be really scary, and then playing something that
Speaker 2: looks like a human but isn't, it's probably like so
Speaker 2: freaking yeah, where you're just like hey, man, like, hey,
Speaker 2: freaky robo wooden, dude, keep moving your pieces around.
Speaker 1: Well, Philidor isn't the only celebrity in Paris around this time.
Speaker 2: Who else is famous in Paris at this time?
Speaker 1: Dana A little man named Benjamin Franklin. Oh, I've heard
Speaker 1: of him, heard of him. He was the signatory at
Speaker 1: the Treaty of Paris at the end of the American
Speaker 1: Revolutionary War, so he's still representing the US in France
Speaker 1: at this time. Templand is a huge Ben Franklin fan.
Speaker 2: That makes sense because they both like to make so
Speaker 2: he's like a fanboy science.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And he right to Benjamin Franklin to be like, hey,
Speaker 1: fandom fan, like, can I meet with you? And so
Speaker 1: Ben Franklin happens to also be a chess fanatic. Kemberland
Speaker 1: invites Franklin to his rooms to demonstrate the chess player,
Speaker 1: to like show him the progress he's making on his
Speaker 1: like speaking machine because like he's fan boying out he
Speaker 1: gets to use his chess player, like he's like, okay,
Speaker 1: I have to be on this tour of Europe. I
Speaker 1: wish I wasn't, but at least I can like meet
Speaker 1: my idols. And Benjamin Franklin plays the automaton and he loses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, Benjamin Franklin was good at so many things.
Speaker 2: It's okay if he's bad at one thing, and that
Speaker 2: thing is chess.
Speaker 1: And he probably wasn't even bad this the chess player
Speaker 1: is just like really good.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So then it goes to London in the autumn of
Speaker 1: seventeen eighty three, goes on display five shillings. At the
Speaker 1: same time, there's this sort of promotional book that's published
Speaker 1: by a man named Carl Gottlieb von Windisch, who's a
Speaker 1: friend of Kemberland. So we know it's like it's like
Speaker 1: an authorized biography. It's basically a book and leaves out
Speaker 1: all of cancellable things that Turks sometimes he said slurs
Speaker 1: when he was drunk and yeah, you know, grabbed women's
Speaker 1: books with his hand with his robotic well, with the
Speaker 1: they say that hand is decorative but that's his that's
Speaker 1: his butt grabbing hand. Well, so this book is like
Speaker 1: written in the form of letters to an anonymous friend,
Speaker 1: like telling the backstory of the automaton and Campellen and
Speaker 1: like what it does. So again, these letters aren't real.
Speaker 1: It's like an ad camp, an epistolary ad campaign. British
Speaker 1: newspapers are writing articles about people being gullible. This is
Speaker 1: also one of those things where I think, with historical
Speaker 1: hopeses were tempted to be like, oh, people were so dumb.
Speaker 1: At the time, people thought that like robots could play chess.
Speaker 1: A yes, some people did, because this.
Speaker 2: Isn't one of the ones where I think people were dumb.
Speaker 1: Well, first I want to say people did not know
Speaker 1: what automatons were capable of, and actually robots can play chess.
Speaker 1: Now people figured out robots can't play chess, so I'm
Speaker 1: just going to say that. But even at the time,
Speaker 1: people were like, I know it's a magic trick, but
Speaker 1: I don't know how it works. Yes, so most pretty
Speaker 1: much everyone kind of was just like, I don't know.
Speaker 2: How it works.
Speaker 1: The newspapers also at this point are referencing the fact
Speaker 1: that the machine had beaten mister Philidor in Paris, which
Speaker 1: is how rumors get started because he didn't oh see.
Speaker 2: And sometimes newspaper writers get things right. Sometimes the newspaper
Speaker 2: writers get things wrong. It's also so interesting that it's
Speaker 2: like the fact that they're making it play chess. It's like,
Speaker 2: somehow somewhere someone smart is involved in this. Yeah you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. It's like, okay, even if you're
Speaker 2: a snotty snot and you're looking at this and you're going, Okay,
Speaker 2: I don't know how this works, but I know that
Speaker 2: everyone falling for it is freaking stupid because there's I
Speaker 2: haven't figured it out yet, but like there's got to
Speaker 2: be really easy explanation because automatons can't play chess. And
Speaker 2: it's like, well, somewhere someone involved in this mechanical turk
Speaker 2: project is freaking smart because they're good at chess. And
Speaker 2: if I know one thing, it's the chess is the
Speaker 2: smart people game. Yeah, you're good at.
Speaker 1: Chess, shorthand for being smart.
Speaker 2: Which I actually don't think is necessarily true, but that's
Speaker 2: like the cultural understanding.
Speaker 1: So in England, there's this guy named Philip Thickness who
Speaker 1: writes an entire book called The Speaking Figure and the
Speaker 1: Automaton Chess Player basically with his explanation for the hoax
Speaker 1: and his explanation, well, first, he starts off by saying,
Speaker 1: it's impossible for machine to play chess. Okay, so we
Speaker 1: know it's impossible for machine to play chess.
Speaker 2: Ergo is a hoax. I'm gonna figure out how it works.
Speaker 1: And his theory is that there is a child quote
Speaker 1: of ten, twelve or fourteen in the machine concealed inside
Speaker 1: the wooden base, using a mirror to look back at
Speaker 1: the reflected image of the game and move the arm.
Speaker 1: He is pointing out that like usually you can only
Speaker 1: see the turk between one and two pm, like the
Speaker 1: display hours, because a kid inside wouldn't want a longer confinement,
Speaker 1: and if it's just a robot, like why wouldn't you
Speaker 1: want it to.
Speaker 2: Work more hours?
Speaker 1: And he also says like there could be room for
Speaker 1: the child to like go up into the turk automaton,
Speaker 1: Like there's not really room in the cabinet, but it
Speaker 1: could like kind of go into the figure and then
Speaker 1: see through. Also, you know other theories see through sort
Speaker 1: of its robes, like its closer like semi transparent so
Speaker 1: there are theories. I will say there are some people
Speaker 1: who see it who are like, I don't know if
Speaker 1: this is real or not, but like I feel very
Speaker 1: inspired by like what the technology could be capable of.
Speaker 1: This man Edmund Kurtwright sees the Turk is so inspired
Speaker 1: that he's like, we could make an automated loom. Yeah,
Speaker 1: He's like, if a machine can play chess, a machine
Speaker 1: can weave, and he makes an automatic loom. He patents
Speaker 1: the power loom three years later, I mean, which like
Speaker 1: really does a lot for the industrial over Let's go.
Speaker 1: So it's like this fake technology, even the people who
Speaker 1: believe it feel like machines are capable of more things
Speaker 1: that then they actually are capable of.
Speaker 2: That's cool.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So Kemberlin spend's a year in London then carries
Speaker 1: on around this time. While he's doing these sort of
Speaker 1: public displays, he kind of starts another technique, which is
Speaker 1: like a second chess board, which is the so like,
Speaker 1: if I'm the figure playing chess, he'll set up like
Speaker 1: a chessboard next to the machine that the player will
Speaker 1: be at, so like the audience can see both people
Speaker 1: facing out and they'll just be like a little string
Speaker 1: in between, and he'll be the go between. So like
Speaker 1: you'll move your piece and then he'll move the piece
Speaker 1: on the turk chess board, and then the Turk will
Speaker 1: move his piece, and then Campellen will move the piece
Speaker 1: on your chess board.
Speaker 2: Does that make sense?
Speaker 4: No?
Speaker 2: Hold on?
Speaker 1: What would like imagine just a stage? I guess not stage,
Speaker 1: more like a little room. But now there's two people
Speaker 1: sitting next to each other side.
Speaker 2: So we're playing one game.
Speaker 1: We're playing one game. He's just being the go between
Speaker 1: to like move the pieces on each store.
Speaker 2: The audience can see better. Yeah, so the audience can
Speaker 2: see better.
Speaker 1: And also because the machine works better if this if
Speaker 1: the pieces are exactly in the middle. Okay, so he
Speaker 1: can like make sure the pieces go exactly in the middle.
Speaker 2: Of the squares.
Speaker 1: Okay, So like that kind of happens. There's this guy
Speaker 1: around this time. It's like traveling through European cities. It
Speaker 1: goes to Leipzig, goes to Dresden. Around Dresden, this man,
Speaker 1: Josef von Recknitz, sees the Turk and becomes like a little.
Speaker 2: Obsessed with how it works.
Speaker 1: He's like, I'm going to figure it out, and he
Speaker 1: builds like models, trying to figure it out, and in
Speaker 1: seventeen eighty nine comes up with this like full book
Speaker 1: with illustrations about how he thinks it works. So I'm
Speaker 1: going to show you his little illustration. This is his
Speaker 1: little illustration of how he thinks it works.
Speaker 2: There's a little man in a little box.
Speaker 1: It's like a little man in the box sitting sitting up,
Speaker 1: and he basically says, the drawer that like bottom drawer
Speaker 1: that pulls out doesn't go all the way to the back.
Speaker 2: Right, so you could like sit with basically your feet
Speaker 2: in the drawer or like your bottom, like you could
Speaker 2: like your butt behind.
Speaker 1: No, it would be even like behind the drawer, Like
Speaker 1: the drawer is like a filtball drawer. So you're sitting
Speaker 1: like kind of in the narrow space behind a where
Speaker 1: drawer ends.
Speaker 2: And then you just sit there and you play the chess.
Speaker 1: And like move the arm. The problem with this, it's
Speaker 1: like a good theory. The problem with it is his
Speaker 1: model is not proportional.
Speaker 2: The man is just so small.
Speaker 1: The man is small. It does not actually work like
Speaker 1: the way he drew it.
Speaker 2: Like the man would be like four feet tall.
Speaker 1: And it's it's not He is literally asking a man
Speaker 1: to fit into a space five feet long, seven inches
Speaker 1: high and eighteen inches wide, So like a person could
Speaker 1: not fit in that small a space. Nope, So like
Speaker 1: people are trying to figure it out, but no one
Speaker 1: is getting the right answer yet. Compellen returns to Vienna
Speaker 1: and like probably keeps the machine dormant. We don't know
Speaker 1: for sure, but it's probably just like hanging out for
Speaker 1: twenty years and he finally gets to put the Turk
Speaker 1: behind him, working as a civil servant, an inventor. He
Speaker 1: writes some plays, makes engravings, works on his speaking machine,
Speaker 1: which is his big passion, and like friends kind of
Speaker 1: know not to ask him.
Speaker 2: About the Turk.
Speaker 1: There are like a lot of rumors at this point
Speaker 1: that like Compellen had this interaction with Frederick the Second
Speaker 1: of Prussia who like insisted on knowing the secret and
Speaker 1: then bought it to like know the secret, were like
Speaker 1: that he played Catherine the Great, but like it didn't.
Speaker 1: So if you ever see like an account of the
Speaker 1: mechanical Turk playing Catherine the Great, you know someone.
Speaker 2: Is full of shit. Interesting. So Campellen dies age seventy
Speaker 2: March twenty sixth, eighteen oh four, and his son sells
Speaker 2: the mechanical turk to this man named Johann Matel, and
Speaker 2: Matel is a Bavarian musician that is interested in music machines.
Speaker 2: He's also very.
Speaker 1: Like a good builder and engineer. He made this instrument
Speaker 1: I don't I guess you call it an instrument half
Speaker 1: an instrument half an automaton called the pan Harmonicon that
Speaker 1: makes the sound of an entire orchestra. And it's basically
Speaker 1: just like a big box like six feet wide, six
Speaker 1: feet deep that plays music the way a whole orchestra does.
Speaker 1: And he's actually friends with Beethoven who composed this like
Speaker 1: song Wellington's victory for it like great. He makes a
Speaker 1: mechanical trumpet player that can be programmed to play many
Speaker 1: different songs.
Speaker 2: Cool. He also made this like his sort of.
Speaker 1: Piece to player piano works. I don't know how player
Speaker 1: piano works. He also makes this mechanical recreation of the
Speaker 1: burning down of Moscow when Napoleon got there. So if
Speaker 1: you're familiar with why would you want that? Well, if
Speaker 1: you're familiar with the Woking Phoenix film Napoleon, I haven't
Speaker 1: seen it well, or history When Napoleon got to Moscow
Speaker 1: Russian people burned it down rather than let him take
Speaker 1: the city.
Speaker 2: Oh so it's like it's like an anti Okay, I
Speaker 2: a little bit get why you would want a mechanical recreation.
Speaker 1: It's like a fun if you're anti Napoleon, which like
Speaker 1: the rest of Europe is, it's a fun anti Napoleon
Speaker 1: little art piece.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: But this metal guy's also like a bit of a plagiarist.
Speaker 1: Like I mentioned, he was friends with Beethoven. He got
Speaker 1: him to write this piece for his mechanical orchestra, but
Speaker 1: then they got in beef because he didn't put Beethoven's
Speaker 1: name on the poster, because he's like, I bought the.
Speaker 2: Song from you. You can't do that, bro.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Beethoven was mad. And then also this one's like
Speaker 1: a pretty egregious example. He invented a rudimentary metronome, and
Speaker 1: then he was traveling around and goes to Amster and
Speaker 1: like meets this inventor. He's like, hey, you're working on
Speaker 1: a metronome. I came up with my own metronome and
Speaker 1: it was like kind of the way you imagine a metronome.
Speaker 1: And Mitchell's like, oh shit, that's better. Yeah, and he
Speaker 1: immediately just bounced. He was like, well, first, can I
Speaker 1: buy it? And the guy was like no, and he's
Speaker 1: like okay, fine, and he leaves and goes to Paris
Speaker 1: and just applies for a patent and pass it off
Speaker 1: as his own and calls it Matel's metronome. And he will,
Speaker 1: at various points in this story claim to have built
Speaker 1: the chess player himself in slightly slightly in his defense,
Speaker 1: it had been out of commission for twenty five years
Speaker 1: so and he like made some modifulations.
Speaker 2: Finders keepers is not a thing.
Speaker 1: No, I'm saying, like he did like put it back together.
Speaker 1: But also you know, since it hadn't really been played
Speaker 1: in like a quarter of a century, like not a
Speaker 1: lot of people like remember or no made it. So
Speaker 1: he yeah, he's let's just he's like a he's a showman. Yeah,
Speaker 1: dare I say the greatest showman.
Speaker 2: He's a Burnamish, a Burnamish figure. Take a shot if
Speaker 2: we uh mentioned Pete Barnum on this pod. Yeah, true.
Speaker 1: This is it's while the mechanical Turk is under the
Speaker 1: custodianship of Matel, that it will meet its most famous opponent.
Speaker 1: It's gonna meet a little man by the name of
Speaker 1: Napoleon Bonaparte.
Speaker 2: Okay, so yeah, so it turns out, you know, right,
Speaker 2: we were pretty anti Napoleon, but then she's gonna march
Speaker 2: on Europe and you're gonna want to make good with him. Uh.
Speaker 1: Mazel sets up the Turk in the apartments of one
Speaker 1: of Napoleon's generals in eighteen oh nine, and so a
Speaker 1: lot of this account, this is a very like famous account.
Speaker 1: It comes from Napoleon's valet.
Speaker 2: Sorry jumping ahead. Does mates almost know how it works? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Mason figures out how it works. He So the son
Speaker 2: didn't tell him he figured it out either.
Speaker 1: The son told him. But if you have it in
Speaker 1: front of you.
Speaker 2: You'll the secret is in the box. Yeah, you can
Speaker 2: figure out it. Okay, Okay. So he's using the same
Speaker 2: method that the original inventor used, Yes, exactly, know how.
Speaker 2: So he's working it the way that it works, plus
Speaker 2: some modification and going around Europe, going around Europe, going
Speaker 2: to do its most famous game. And now he's going
Speaker 2: to Napoleon. Most of this account we're taking the history
Speaker 2: of this from Napoleon's valet, who went by Constant, who
Speaker 2: published his memoirs in eighteen thirty. There are a lot
Speaker 2: of other accounts of Napoleon with the Turk, because you know,
Speaker 2: it's like kind of the most famous and romantic episode
Speaker 2: in the Turk's history, So just like bear that in
Speaker 2: mind that but a lot of them come from this
Speaker 2: main account that I am going to take as the
Speaker 2: most historically accurate because it's someone who is actually the
Speaker 2: most primary source. Basically, Napoleon sits across from the Turk,
Speaker 2: the Turk salutes, Napoleon makes a few moves, and then
Speaker 2: like kind of trying to trick it, makes an intentionally
Speaker 2: false move to test the automaton to be like, what
Speaker 2: are you going to do if I me? And for
Speaker 2: Napoleon like tries to cheat, and the automaton shakes his
Speaker 2: head and puts the piece back where it's supposed to be,
Speaker 2: and then Napoleon cheats again, and then a third time,
Speaker 2: and then the Turk shakes his head and sweeps all
Speaker 2: the pieces off the board, and he's like, that's it.
Speaker 2: I love that, because why wouldn't a tom and Tom
Speaker 2: be scared of Napoleon. He's not, He's already to give
Speaker 2: a shit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So another version of this story will say like
Speaker 1: Matel had Napoleon sitting at the second chess board, and
Speaker 1: then like we'll be like a Napoleon tried to cross
Speaker 1: the roped off area and Matel stopped him. Another it's
Speaker 1: better if they're facing each other, yeah, And like another
Speaker 1: account will say that, like you know, when they were
Speaker 1: at when he tried to put him at the second chessboard,
Speaker 1: Napoleon said, ah, I will only fight him face to face.
Speaker 1: And then like they played at the same chess board.
Speaker 1: But it's like that's a good story, but like probably not,
Speaker 1: it doesn't.
Speaker 2: It's really hard for me to picture Napoleon being like
Speaker 2: at a different chess board, Like it's like so emasculating
Speaker 2: to be at, like this is your chess board, and
Speaker 2: this is your chess board.
Speaker 1: And then they also say like a you know, Napoleon
Speaker 1: thought that the person inside the operator would be looking
Speaker 1: out through the Turk's clothing, so he like tied a
Speaker 1: shawl round his body. And again I think that like
Speaker 1: because spoiler alert, it wasn't it's not a guy sitting
Speaker 1: in there, so like if you did tie a shawl
Speaker 1: around the body, it wouldn't wouldn't make a difference. So
Speaker 1: I think sometimes these like later stories are like meant
Speaker 1: to show like the trickery involved, but like that's there's
Speaker 1: no actual historical record of that.
Speaker 4: Okay.
Speaker 1: There's also later in like eighteen forty four, so again
Speaker 1: this is like years later there'll be a London news
Speaker 1: chess column that claims that they actually did play the
Speaker 1: full game, which lasted nineteen moves, and they reproduce all
Speaker 1: of the moves, but like they don't have any evidence
Speaker 1: that those.
Speaker 2: Are the moves.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it also doesn't really make sense because it
Speaker 1: like has both of them playing very badly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, I feel like if somebody were there recording
Speaker 2: the moves, like we would like that would be in
Speaker 2: a museum.
Speaker 1: If someone had recorded the moves. It feels unlikely that
Speaker 1: the first account of that would be a lunch did
Speaker 1: in news column in eighteen forty four. But at a
Speaker 1: certain point, napoleon stepson enters the chat. Okay, he is
Speaker 1: mayor famously married to a woman named Josephine.
Speaker 2: I didn't know he had a step son.
Speaker 1: Josephine had kids from a first marriage, who's her husband
Speaker 1: incidentally guillotine by Napoleon No, okay, by the French Revolution,
Speaker 1: but not her, not.
Speaker 2: Her, because she was just a lady. In theory.
Speaker 1: She was like almost she was like in line to
Speaker 1: be guillotine. The luckily the French Revolution like ran out
Speaker 1: of Steene before that. History history is weird. The steps
Speaker 1: On purchases the Turk sometime between eighteen oh nine and
Speaker 1: eighteen twelve. He loved chess. He wants to know the secret.
Speaker 2: And he's like, this is that machine that annoyed my stepdad.
Speaker 2: Did Napoleon get along with his steps On?
Speaker 1: Yeah, no they were.
Speaker 2: They were good friends.
Speaker 1: No, they not good friends. They heavily a lot of
Speaker 1: mutrable respect. They were allies.
Speaker 2: This is such an interest question to asking an episode
Speaker 2: about chess. Did Napoleon get along with the steps He did?
Speaker 2: All right, fantastic? Okay, So he loves chess. He wants
Speaker 2: to know the secret.
Speaker 1: Ye, matel says that he'll only tell you this, tell
Speaker 1: you the secret if you buy it.
Speaker 2: Ye. Eugene offers to buy it.
Speaker 1: His name is Eugene, Eugen. I don't know how to
Speaker 1: ta it in a French way.
Speaker 2: Okay. He offers to buy it.
Speaker 1: He pays thirty thousand francs for it, which is three
Speaker 1: times what Mattel had paid, and so at this time,
Speaker 1: you know, Eugene is off with Now he owns the
Speaker 1: chess robot. Matel is busy working on a new panharmonicon
Speaker 1: and the mechanical new you know, his fancy mechanical display
Speaker 1: of the Conflagration of Moscow. Around this time, Napoleon is
Speaker 1: defeated by Wellington. We're going to fast forward again to
Speaker 1: eighteen fifteen, four years later.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying it all ties back, because where was
Speaker 2: Napoleon defeated Waterlin Abbas breakout.
Speaker 1: Hit Abbas bright chess chess.
Speaker 2: It all comes back.
Speaker 1: So again I'm like fast forwarding through a lot of history.
Speaker 1: But basically Eugene has this robot for four years. MATEL
Speaker 1: comes back now that He's like, I have my pan Harmonicon,
Speaker 1: I have my Conflagration of Moscow. I want my chess
Speaker 1: player back for my little museum. He tries to buy
Speaker 1: it back. Eugene is like, well, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: sell it for less than thirty thousand francs, which is
Speaker 1: what that makes sense. MATEL cannot afford that. There's a
Speaker 1: few different accounts. Maytel is like bad with money, but
Speaker 1: the likeliest sort of outcome here is that he like
Speaker 1: kind of agrees to like a buy now, pay later,
Speaker 1: like in tries to Klarna. Yeah, he Klarina is the
Speaker 1: mechanical chest robot.
Speaker 2: I do understand the principle of don't sell something for
Speaker 2: less than you paid for it. That makes sense to me.
Speaker 1: So Meltel goes back on tour. He goes to London.
Speaker 1: He puts this mechanical turk on display with his trumpeter
Speaker 1: and some other attractions. Crowds are really great by this point.
Speaker 1: It's like a speaking robot. It'll say check and later
Speaker 1: when it tours in France, they'll say, like a check
Speaker 1: in French, and then they say that. From that point on,
Speaker 1: he doesn't do He does mostly the same like little
Speaker 1: show of like opening cabinets in the same order that Kempellendad,
Speaker 1: except he won't like use the wooden.
Speaker 2: Cask that he was holding walk around with.
Speaker 1: He doesn't walk around the box because he's like, people
Speaker 1: aren't that superstitious anymore.
Speaker 2: The box is like spoiler alert misdirection, Oh okay, and
Speaker 2: so he's like, oh, I'm not going to do that, okay,
Speaker 2: but you know, it's it's a big hit. People love it.
Speaker 1: Crowds are so great he has to like keep it
Speaker 1: open every single day. So up until this point, the
Speaker 1: chess player the mechanical turk always went first because his
Speaker 1: side of the board is white. At this point, to
Speaker 1: like make it jazzier and more impressive, mental will let
Speaker 1: the opponent go first using black, which is like not traditional,
Speaker 1: and he will also have the mechanical turk be down
Speaker 1: upon as like a little handicap.
Speaker 2: He'll like upon I thought you said like a pawn,
Speaker 2: like once upon a time, Like he is down upon.
Speaker 1: What down a pawn chess piece does he is he
Speaker 1: losing more? Not really so he's like quote giving odds
Speaker 1: of pawn and move, and over three hundred games of
Speaker 1: this he loses about six.
Speaker 2: Thought's really good, Oh, really good.
Speaker 1: Although I will say, like for me, like you have
Speaker 1: a chess playing robot in theory, that's what you're saying
Speaker 1: you have. Why do you need to like make it
Speaker 1: harder for you to like, I guess to me, I'm like,
Speaker 1: what's impressive. Isn't that it's good at chess. It's impressive
Speaker 1: that it's like playing at all, Like you're purporting to
Speaker 1: have made a chess playing robot. Why do you need
Speaker 1: to like be like and I can win with less
Speaker 1: one less pawn. Does that make it more impressive to you?
Speaker 2: I think it makes it like fresh?
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, like if you're like, if you've lived in a
Speaker 2: world where we already accept that there's a chess playing robot.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's fair. And I mean again, people at this
Speaker 1: point are writing. This man Robert Willis writes this.
Speaker 2: Pain like if you taught a dog to sing like
Speaker 2: you want it to sing. Well, yeah, that's true.
Speaker 1: So this man, Robert Willis writes this pamphlet in eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty one, trying to come up with how it's done.
Speaker 1: And his determination is like he's like, okay, first, it's
Speaker 1: impossible for a robot to think. Quote, it cannot usurp
Speaker 1: and exercise the faculties of mind. It cannot be made
Speaker 1: to vary its operations so as to meet the ever
Speaker 1: varying circumstances of a game of chess. So he's like,
Speaker 1: I know, it's a cabinet. It's a you know, parlor trick.
Speaker 1: His explanation is that like a player moves up into
Speaker 1: the turk's torso and guides.
Speaker 2: The hand like a puppet. I guess like kind of
Speaker 2: a big bird situation. Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 1: This guy goes on to become a professor of mathematics
Speaker 1: at Cambridge. Smart dude, and his grandpa, incidentally, was the
Speaker 1: one who cured George the Third's first out of madness.
Speaker 2: I just find that interesting. Okay. So these people have
Speaker 2: thought a lot about what the mind can and cannot do.
Speaker 1: But you know what, someone is in London at this
Speaker 1: time who actually thinks computers might be capable of reasoning.
Speaker 2: Okay, and it's a man named Charles Babbage. Does that
Speaker 2: sounds really familiar?
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So he sees the Turk play in March eighteen nineteen
Speaker 1: and again the next year, and he's like very impressed
Speaker 1: with the mechanisms of the movement. He's positive that it's
Speaker 1: under human control. He's like, this is not actually an automaton,
Speaker 1: but you know, and he doesn't know how. He's like,
Speaker 1: I can't figure it out, I know, but I can.
Speaker 1: This is a person doing it.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: But he's still like very inspired by this question of
Speaker 1: whether a chess playing machine is possible. And Charles Babbage
Speaker 1: is going to work on this thing called the difference
Speaker 1: engine and then later the analytical Engine, which are precursors
Speaker 1: to the modern computer. Yes, Like he basically figures out like, oh,
Speaker 1: actually a computer would be capable of playing jazz. So
Speaker 1: Mittel continues on his tour. He goes to Amsterdam, where
Speaker 1: if you remember, there was a guy who's still mad
Speaker 1: that he stole his metronome.
Speaker 2: Yeah, anyone would be. He tries to get Metzal investigated
Speaker 2: for piracy and he is basically forced to admit that
Speaker 2: he stole the design, but then it bound is immediately
Speaker 2: before he faces any consequences. Does another season in London,
Speaker 2: goes to Paris, hit by another lawsuit, this time from
Speaker 2: Eugene for failure to make payments. Yeah, no kidding, So
Speaker 2: he tries to sell the churk Off to pay his debts.
Speaker 2: At this point, there's no bite posses give it back
Speaker 2: to Eugene.
Speaker 1: Well he doesn't want to, because it's like what he's
Speaker 1: gonna use to make money, But at this point no
Speaker 1: one buys it, presumably because they're like, well it's not
Speaker 1: really yours to sell. Yeah okay, yeah, but he does
Speaker 1: what any I guess showman would do in this situation,
Speaker 1: which is just say off to America.
Speaker 2: Uh huh, the land of running away from your debt.
Speaker 1: Land of running away from your debt. He lands in
Speaker 1: New York in eighteen twenty six. Big Crowds in New
Speaker 1: York sells out a lot of newspaper coverage. Something slightly
Speaker 1: different is happening here. He's the chess mechanical Turk is
Speaker 1: playing only end games, which means you sort of like
Speaker 1: set up a puzzle, and he would let opponents pick
Speaker 1: out of a book like which end game they would
Speaker 1: want to play, And he would also let the opponents
Speaker 1: pick which whether they want to be black or white,
Speaker 1: which side they want to be and uh, but the
Speaker 1: Turk would always start, which kind of meant that like
Speaker 1: it would always win, right, Like if you know the
Speaker 1: tricks of this book, Like if you know all the
Speaker 1: end games, you kind of can like know all.
Speaker 2: The puzzles, right, and you could program them into a computer. Yeah,
Speaker 2: in theatery potentially.
Speaker 1: Uh, Eugene at this point had died, but his family
Speaker 1: representatives do follow.
Speaker 5: Uh.
Speaker 2: Yeah, these are the descendants of the step kids of Napoleon.
Speaker 2: They've got that dog in him.
Speaker 1: In case you're wondering, he does look settle up, so
Speaker 1: like we don't worry about that anymore. The Turk is
Speaker 1: not playing full games, but there is a lot of
Speaker 1: public pressure from a man named Greco who's kind of
Speaker 1: like New York's leading chess player, and he wants to
Speaker 1: play a full game against the Turk, but the Turk
Speaker 1: is like no, no. It comes up with all these excuses,
Speaker 1: comes up up with the excuses, and then goes to Boston.
Speaker 1: And there's like a big rivalry between New York and
Speaker 1: Boston over like who are better chess players. It will
Speaker 1: some other stuff, but like at this point with the Turk,
Speaker 1: they're like hmm. And the Turk does start playing full
Speaker 1: games in Boston and loses a match, which causes people
Speaker 1: in Boston to start bragging about how they're the best.
Speaker 1: Greco writes into a newspaper issuing a challenge. Metal doesn't
Speaker 1: respond yet. It beats a bunch of players. It beats
Speaker 1: most of the players, but does lose to a guy
Speaker 1: named doctor Benjamin Green, who, as you know, it's like
Speaker 1: big bragging rights I beat the right, goes to Philadelphia.
Speaker 1: It does briefly stop in New York City again and
Speaker 1: says it will rise to Greco's challenge.
Speaker 2: The okay, but first I want to get a slice
Speaker 2: of pizza.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he's like, should we put money on it?
Speaker 2: Let's meet privately.
Speaker 1: Metzel says, look, my turk is still packed up because
Speaker 1: we're on our way to Philadelphia. But like you're bragging
Speaker 1: about how players in New York City are the best,
Speaker 1: better than European players, would you be willing to play
Speaker 1: my associate, my sort of right hand man and secretary,
Speaker 1: a man named Schlumberger, Because if you're better, then you know,
Speaker 1: if you if you're saying you can beat the turk,
Speaker 1: like you're saying you can bet European players, play my secretary.
Speaker 1: Greco loses to Schlumberger and then issues of public apology
Speaker 1: saying that, like, you know what, American chess players were
Speaker 1: beaten by a foreigner. So I love to see a
Speaker 1: man humbled goes to Philadelphia, goes to Baltimore where the
Speaker 1: MCA turk. I find this very charming. He plays a
Speaker 1: man named Charles Carroll, who is eighty nine years old
Speaker 1: and at this point the last living signer of the
Speaker 1: Declaration of Independence, and like, the Turk loses, but it
Speaker 1: plays like really badly, like it was like one move
Speaker 1: away from winning and then like made a silly move
Speaker 1: so it's like it lost.
Speaker 2: I like that. I like that, I like giving a
Speaker 2: win to an old guy. Yeah, so it's like it
Speaker 2: lost to the old guy, which is cute. And at
Speaker 2: this point, while it's in Baltimore, two young boys climb
Speaker 2: onto a roof nearby and they look down and they
Speaker 2: they write into a newspaper and say, hey, we were
Speaker 2: hanging out on a roof and we saw a guy
Speaker 2: climb out of that machine. The newspaper publish, first publishes
Speaker 2: its account, and then later is like, well, it was
Speaker 2: like two boys were not corroborated, you know, it was
Speaker 2: like uncorroborated. And then also other newspapers are like, you
Speaker 2: stupid idiots, Like that was MATEL trying to drum up publicity,
Speaker 2: like he was trying to be like can you like yeah,
Speaker 2: So people then accuse that newspaper of like falling for
Speaker 2: a hoax, of like there were never two boys you saw.
Speaker 2: He was just trying to be like all press is
Speaker 2: good press, sure, but it doesn't sound like he really
Speaker 2: needs press. No, But that's so okay. Well, putting a
Speaker 2: pin in that bit.
Speaker 1: A little bit, because another like very American thing that
Speaker 1: I think that happens is like there's a lot of imitators.
Speaker 2: At this point, I was about to say, because the
Speaker 2: guy who invented this originally, yeah, someone else could invent
Speaker 2: I mean, he wasn't like the most genius person in
Speaker 2: the whole wide world. He was like very smart, but
Speaker 2: it did all that stuff in Austria.
Speaker 1: But like there is like a quote unquote American chess player,
Speaker 1: but he's like less impressive robotically, which is again you're like, whoa,
Speaker 1: The mechanical turck was invented decades ago, but still it
Speaker 1: is less impressive mechanically, and it's also worse at chess.
Speaker 2: See Okay, so you're right. You just said why does
Speaker 2: it have to be good at chess? Because if it's
Speaker 2: not good at chess, it's not as impressive. You're right.
Speaker 2: I eat my words.
Speaker 1: He Metchel like tries to buy it to like get
Speaker 1: it off the market. The players refuse, but like that's
Speaker 1: actually not a big deal. It like is eventually sold.
Speaker 1: It's like less good at just no one really cares
Speaker 1: about it. There's an automaton whist player that is whist
Speaker 1: like a game, I guess a card game.
Speaker 2: I think I never heard of this.
Speaker 1: He buys it and then take a shot Lizzie Logan
Speaker 1: because we're about to get a camp P. T.
Speaker 2: Barnum. P. T. Barnum writes in his memoir that he
Speaker 2: meets this is like this is out of a movie.
Speaker 2: This really is my favorite scene. Dana is like wriggling
Speaker 2: around in her chair. She's like having a cane. He P. T.
Speaker 1: Barnum in his My according Memoirs, meets Metzel at this
Speaker 1: point is the greatest showman and right quote that he P. T.
Speaker 1: Barnum was pleased with Metal's assurance that I would certainly
Speaker 1: make a successful showman, like.
Speaker 2: Like at the beginning of the movie, Ye guess the
Speaker 2: goods kid, exactly, you got the goods to trick people.
Speaker 1: One day you'll be the greatest showman. Also, the mechanical
Speaker 1: check is kind of like Forrest Gump, Like it just
Speaker 1: like keeps appearing throughout history.
Speaker 2: Like meeting. It's like and that little kid with Steve Jobs,
Speaker 2: Well you know who it's about to meet. Okay, it's
Speaker 2: already met Ben Franklin. Yeah, it's already met Napoleon. Yep,
Speaker 2: it's already met P. T. Barnum, It's already met a
Speaker 2: signer of the Declaration of Well, did Ben Franklin sign
Speaker 2: the Decoration of Inpendence?
Speaker 4: I think?
Speaker 2: Okay, So it's now met two signers of the Decoration
Speaker 2: of Independance. Who else could it possibly meet?
Speaker 1: Well, it goes down to Richmond, Virginia in eighteen thirty
Speaker 1: five and meets a young reporter writing for the Southern
Speaker 1: Literary Messenger named Edgar Allan Poe and Edgar A. And
Speaker 1: Poe writes this famous essay explaining how he thinks it works.
Speaker 1: Is he right, no, okay, And he's close though, he's like,
Speaker 1: it's like pretty good. His conclusion is basically the same
Speaker 1: as that young guy Willis's, which is like the cabinet
Speaker 1: is like there's movable partitions, it's like a trick cabinet.
Speaker 1: There's someone in there. And he does think that someone
Speaker 1: moves up into the turk's body, and he points out,
Speaker 1: he does make the very intelligent observation that you never
Speaker 1: see that Schlumberger guy in the same place as the turk,
Speaker 1: and you know there was a moment when Schlumberger was
Speaker 1: ill and the Turk's performances stops.
Speaker 2: So it's like just like happened to be quite short.
Speaker 1: I don't know actually but again Edgar ound Poe. People
Speaker 1: say that he's like famous for inventing the detective story.
Speaker 1: That's like a thing that like and like this article
Speaker 1: that he wrote which is very interesting that I will
Speaker 1: you know, link to. In the episode description is kind
Speaker 1: of structured and written like a detective story. It is like,
Speaker 1: here's the situation, here's my investigation, here are my observations,
Speaker 1: here's my conclusion. So he's kind of mass bring the form,
Speaker 1: just like another interesting cameo. Meanwhile, the tour continues around
Speaker 1: the US New Orleans eventually Havana. I think Mettel realizes
Speaker 1: this time, like with the Imitator, like, look, I'm not
Speaker 1: going to just get by on my mechanical turk. I
Speaker 1: need like my whole little museum collection. So while he's
Speaker 1: like working on a bigger, better version of the conflagration
Speaker 1: of Moscow, he builds like a diorama of the Pyrrhic
Speaker 1: fires and like has a few other little like cabinet tricks,
Speaker 1: oh kbinet of curiosity tricks. But then you know, things
Speaker 1: take a turn for the worst. In November of eighteen
Speaker 1: thirty seven, he's going on a second tour of Havana,
Speaker 1: but in the spring of that year, Schlumberger, his right
Speaker 1: hand man and secretary, dies of yellow fever. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: it never says anywhere, and there's no evidence that they're lovers,
Speaker 1: but I like to imagine the lack okay, because he's
Speaker 1: really sad when he dies. The rest of Mental's company
Speaker 1: does hurt him. He's in debt from building his new
Speaker 1: better Conflagration of Moscow, and he's like alone on a
Speaker 1: ship and like this is like the saddest detail to me.
Speaker 1: He's on this ship coming back from Havana. The captain
Speaker 1: sees him sitting alone with a travel chess set and
Speaker 1: challenges him to a game of chess.
Speaker 2: It's like chess, I know.
Speaker 1: And Metzl wins one game and then plays a second
Speaker 1: game and loses, and he's like a bad sport about it,
Speaker 1: and like goes to his cabin, stays there for six
Speaker 1: days straight drinking, and then the like people in the
Speaker 1: cabin in the ship find him.
Speaker 2: He died and he's buried at sea. July. Oh, he
Speaker 2: dies dies too on the ship. That is that's not
Speaker 2: just sad, that's like yeah, man.
Speaker 1: And I will say, like for a guy who was
Speaker 1: like a con man and plagiarist. Like people are sad
Speaker 1: when he dies, like it's nice obituaries because he was
Speaker 1: like a good entertainer. Yeah, and this is kind of
Speaker 1: the era where it's like it was entertainment. He wasn't,
Speaker 1: like I mean, it sounds like he was.
Speaker 2: Like bad with money con Man, not like promising you
Speaker 2: riches and taking your money and absconding in the night
Speaker 2: and leaving you pregnant with the bad debts con Man.
Speaker 2: I mean, like, again, there's a difference.
Speaker 1: The goal was entertainment always, which like as far as
Speaker 1: hoaxes go, I kind of always am on the side
Speaker 1: of like, well that's like you know, and noble hoax.
Speaker 1: If it's like consensual entertainment, sure, like a magic show.
Speaker 2: And also I can't imagine the tickets to this work
Speaker 2: costs very much.
Speaker 1: No, And I don't think people were going like they
Speaker 1: weren't being like I'm going to install a chess playing
Speaker 1: robot technology in my home. You just get to like
Speaker 1: go and be like that's cool and go about your day.
Speaker 2: And if you found out that it wasn't real, you
Speaker 2: wouldn't be like, my.
Speaker 4: Life is alive.
Speaker 1: I do kind of think of it as like a magician,
Speaker 1: where like if you see a magician like a good
Speaker 1: magic trick, you're I have no idea how that worked.
Speaker 1: That was great, but like you kind of know it's
Speaker 1: not real, but you can still be impressed.
Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, they don't sew a lady in half.
Speaker 2: I hope everybody everyone knows that.
Speaker 1: So with that, as I mentioned, like Mitchel was in
Speaker 1: debt from like building his new conflagration of Moscow, and
Speaker 1: like the businessman who had loaned him money, takes possession
Speaker 1: of his things, tries to auction off the turk.
Speaker 2: No one really.
Speaker 1: Buys it, so he basically just buys it to himself
Speaker 1: for four hundred dollars the equivalent of about like twelve
Speaker 1: thousand dollars today.
Speaker 2: Who buys it?
Speaker 1: This businessman, oh John, He just sort of like took
Speaker 1: possession of Mantel's things. But then there's this man John
Speaker 1: kerz Lee Mitchell, who actually is Edgar around Poe's personal
Speaker 1: physician at this point, and he is very curious about
Speaker 1: how the mechanical turk works, Like he likes the history,
Speaker 1: he thinks it's cool, and he basically crowdsources buy it
Speaker 1: so that everyone can pay to like see how it works.
Speaker 1: He's like, buy a ticket to like join my club,
Speaker 1: will buy the robot and like figure out how it works. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he does, and in eighteen forty like people he
Speaker 1: either five or ten dollars, he has seventy five like
Speaker 1: quote unquote subscribers.
Speaker 2: They buy the machine.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately for him, it was like separated in a bunch
Speaker 1: of crates, like pieces seem to be missing, and there's
Speaker 1: like a lot of like red herring pieces, like presumably
Speaker 1: because like when it was traveling place to place, they
Speaker 1: like didn't want everyone who unloaded the boxes to know
Speaker 1: how it works. So like it's kind of hard to
Speaker 1: put back together. It's a tricky puzzle. But eventually he
Speaker 1: does public performances for his like little club of people
Speaker 1: where they would like do the performance and then like
Speaker 1: show ever and how it works. He kind of loses
Speaker 1: interests at a certain point because he's like, I don't
Speaker 1: want everyone coming over to my office to see how
Speaker 1: this works. Like we figured this out. He donated to
Speaker 1: the Philadelphia Museum aka known at this point as the
Speaker 1: Chinese Museum, because like, once you know the secret, it's
Speaker 1: less interesting. It's like a cool historical object, but like,
Speaker 1: what are you gonna.
Speaker 2: Do with it, but I want to know the secret.
Speaker 1: Well, it does a few acasional shows at the museum,
Speaker 1: but like now that there's no showman, yeah, it's not
Speaker 1: really no one really cares. Okay, it's relegated to the
Speaker 1: back of the museum. And then July fifth, eighteen fifty four,
Speaker 1: I have some really bad news.
Speaker 2: Is it burned down?
Speaker 1: A fire starts at a National theater in nearby reaches
Speaker 1: the museum. John Mitchell's son Silas, recounts that like he
Speaker 1: ran to the museum to try to save it, and he,
Speaker 1: like very romantically recounts like I don't like to see it.
Speaker 2: He does.
Speaker 1: He says that he heard it say it's final words
Speaker 1: like chick and burned down. At this point, though, I'm
Speaker 1: going to put you out of your misery because.
Speaker 2: This is my curiosity, like horniness for this information.
Speaker 1: Well, so Silas where Mitchell, the son of the guy
Speaker 1: who like purchased it for the club, is like, you
Speaker 1: know what, now that it's burned down, now that doesn't exist,
Speaker 1: I will publish the answer.
Speaker 2: Okay. Side note Silas.
Speaker 1: Where Mitchell the guy, the son of the guy who
Speaker 1: published the answer, is also the guy who invented the
Speaker 1: rest cure for women, which is like, if you're sick,
Speaker 1: just sit in bed and do nothing.
Speaker 2: Someone had to invent that. Well, like it's a bad ideas,
Speaker 2: like ancient wisdom.
Speaker 1: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, did you have to read the Yellow
Speaker 1: wallpaper in college about that woman who it goes crazy? Well,
Speaker 1: he treated her and she read the short story about
Speaker 1: going nuts, because that's not a way to treat women.
Speaker 2: Okay, that's that's him.
Speaker 1: He's published in Answers and also coming up with sort
Speaker 1: of a Victorian cures for curing women.
Speaker 2: I do think, like go hang out by the seaside.
Speaker 2: That's a good cure. Away from everyone who's bothering you,
Speaker 2: is like a good cure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but like sit in a bed and you can't
Speaker 1: read or like interact with anyone or do anything would
Speaker 1: be torture. But okay, here is the answer. As he
Speaker 1: publishes it, people were right about like details about their theories,
Speaker 1: but no one had put it all together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like everybody got five percent, got everyone got
Speaker 2: kind of like fifty percent. Okay, but here's the kind
Speaker 2: of the amazing thing, Like this is decades later, like
Speaker 2: it is almost one hundred years later that this guy
Speaker 2: invented this like magic trick really and like no one
Speaker 2: figured it out, which is like, great, good job, this
Speaker 2: successful piece of entertainment. It's like a chess move.
Speaker 1: The way it worked is that bottom drawer did not
Speaker 1: extend all the way back correct on that inside. I'm
Speaker 1: going to try to find a picture that I think
Speaker 1: will sum this up really well. Here we go inside.
Speaker 1: There is a sliding seat, so if you're on a seat,
Speaker 1: it slides back and forth, so there is surprise surprise
Speaker 1: a person inside. Someone is like crouched at the back,
Speaker 1: and when he's showing the front right, he's like back,
Speaker 1: he like sells a chair back.
Speaker 2: Basically, you're in whatever part of the box is not
Speaker 2: on display.
Speaker 1: Yes, And then when he's like displaying the bigger compartment,
Speaker 1: you pull slide the sliding chair FOURD and he can
Speaker 1: open that one and then when it closes you can
Speaker 1: sort of sit up right. And the way it worked
Speaker 1: it's actually kind of amazing technology because like, Okay, what
Speaker 1: is your theory of how he would know what was
Speaker 1: happening on the chess game. There's a guy sitting in
Speaker 1: the cabinet that much we know.
Speaker 2: This is not my theory. This is my half remembered
Speaker 2: explanation from this YouTube video. Okay, is that like basically
Speaker 2: there was like a magnet version. I'm picturing it like
Speaker 2: upside down of the chessboard, so that they could just
Speaker 2: sort of know what was going on up there.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's that's the basic idea. So what it
Speaker 1: is what you should picture is on the roof of
Speaker 1: the the box cabinet. Imagine little strings hold like magnetized
Speaker 1: little discs. Yeah, And all of the chess pieces have
Speaker 1: magnets in them, so when a piece is on a square,
Speaker 1: the little disc is magnetized up. And if you pick
Speaker 1: a piece up, it drops on the string right, So
Speaker 1: then it would like bounce on the string and you could.
Speaker 2: Be like, ah, that guy picked up that piece.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then when you put it on a new square,
Speaker 1: that little magnetized disc jumps up to magnetize, right, so
Speaker 1: he could follow the game upside down, yes, and then
Speaker 1: he would have his own board, like he would be
Speaker 1: able to move this thing that then would move the
Speaker 1: arm of the turk in a corresponding.
Speaker 2: Way like an autograph machine. An autograph machine exactly.
Speaker 5: So you see it's like he was so basically it's
Speaker 5: like we're talking like a series of interconnected sticks going
Speaker 5: from my hand up to the Turk's hand, so that
Speaker 5: if I move my hand.
Speaker 2: Two inches north, its hand moves two inches north. So
Speaker 2: I can operate it from below and you open your hand,
Speaker 2: I close the hand, open claw, pick up piece, clothes
Speaker 2: claw exactly, yes, And he could make make the turk nod.
Speaker 1: He could make him roll his eyes with little mechanisms inside.
Speaker 1: He could also just make like generic whirring sounds, like
Speaker 1: generically if he had like coffer sneeze, it would make
Speaker 1: like machine sounds to cover the coffer sneeze. There was
Speaker 1: sort of a it's not like that important, but like
Speaker 1: a little number code system that they could twist inside
Speaker 1: outside like imagine just like a little simple thing where
Speaker 1: like numbers would appear on the outside to communicate little
Speaker 1: messages back and forth to be like my candle went out,
Speaker 1: and then he could like come down and like readjust
Speaker 1: the you know, mechanics relight the candle. The reason that
Speaker 1: the Turk always had a candelabra on the table wasn't
Speaker 1: just to light the game, but also to know how
Speaker 1: no to disguise the smoke of the other, which is
Speaker 1: pretty clever, and it leads to my next point that
Speaker 1: there's like a lot of like literature and stories about
Speaker 1: this because it's like very romantic. There's also this story
Speaker 1: that is unfortunately not true, that says, like, Okay, before
Speaker 1: Compellan built his mechanical turk, he was in Russia working
Speaker 1: on his speaking machine, and he ran into this Polish
Speaker 1: revolutionary who had led an uprising against the Russian army
Speaker 1: and which there was that was real, and he had
Speaker 1: lost his legs in battle, but he can't get out
Speaker 1: of Russia because he's a wanted man. And so while
Speaker 1: they're holed up in a cabin, Compellan realizes that he
Speaker 1: is amazing at chess, and he builds this mechanical turk
Speaker 1: to like sneak him out of Russia. Funny, and like
Speaker 1: then there's another like.
Speaker 2: But then he actually did solve a mystery and gets
Speaker 2: several wrongfully imprisonment out of jail.
Speaker 1: So yeah, apparently, so like there's a lot of romantic stories,
Speaker 1: and I, you know, I think it's very like it
Speaker 1: raises very interesting questions about thinking and what a machine
Speaker 1: can do, because, as you mentioned, like now robots can
Speaker 1: play chess. There's a very famous period where a i'll
Speaker 1: say robot, machine, computer, computer is the word named deep
Speaker 1: Blue will play against the chess grand master Kasparov and
Speaker 1: it'll beat him. And it's like a computer can now
Speaker 1: beat a grand master, and like nowadays machines can play
Speaker 1: chess like they're nothing. But like I will ask you
Speaker 1: the philosophical question if you don't mind me taking a
Speaker 1: few moments, like a lot of times those machines. I'm
Speaker 1: not an expert in computers, but at least the way
Speaker 1: deep Blue was playing and deep thought, which is like precursor,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like rote information. It knows all the
Speaker 1: possible moves and then it sort of reads okay, based
Speaker 1: on this position, like here are all the possible moves
Speaker 1: I could make like information trees, and just there's a
Speaker 1: lot of computational power that it can store all that
Speaker 1: information and then apply it. But like, is a computer
Speaker 1: thinking if it is plain chess? Is my question to you,
Speaker 1: I mean, what is thinking? So there's a famous thought experiment.
Speaker 1: I think therefore it am there's a famous thought experiment
Speaker 1: I barely called the Chinese room thought experiment that like
Speaker 1: this whole thing kind of reminds me of which is
Speaker 1: this idea that like it was written in the I
Speaker 1: say nineteen nineteen eighty by a man named John Searle,
Speaker 1: who said, like, imagine you are in a room. To
Speaker 1: the best of my anlogy, you do not speak Chinese. No,
Speaker 1: but imagine you had a I can say, anyhow well done.
Speaker 1: Imagine you had a book that basically like, you're in
Speaker 1: a room, someone slides a piece of paper under the
Speaker 1: door with a Chinese symbol, and you have a big
Speaker 1: old book that is like if someone gives you this
Speaker 1: symbol right back this symbol, and so someone writes you
Speaker 1: a Chinese symbol, you and like, you write the Chinese
Speaker 1: symbol back, and then they write you a different Chinese symbol,
Speaker 1: and then you figure out reading the book and send
Speaker 1: a Chinese symbol back. That person on the other side
Speaker 1: would be like, Wow, this person is writing to me
Speaker 1: back and forth in Chinese, but you do not understand Chinese.
Speaker 2: So they think we're having a conversation, yeah, and you
Speaker 2: want I'm just being a little computer. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so the question is like, I guess the philosophical
Speaker 1: argument is like you are playing that game, but you
Speaker 1: do not understand Chinese. A computer can say like, okay,
Speaker 1: if a piece moves here, then like statistically I should
Speaker 1: move my piece here. But does that mean it like
Speaker 1: understands Yeah, And.
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't like this is now with questions of like
Speaker 1: ai is it just like a lot of these like
Speaker 1: language models are just like filling in like predictive text.
Speaker 2: But are they thinking? I don't. These are like.
Speaker 1: Questions that I think philosophers are going to be reckoning
Speaker 1: with for for a long time.
Speaker 2: I know, because it's also like I won't speak for
Speaker 2: why chess players play chess. I think that depends player
Speaker 2: to player, but a lot of them are like they
Speaker 2: might they might be doing it for like the love
Speaker 2: of the game. Yeah you know what I mean. Like
Speaker 2: I didn't understand running for a really long time where
Speaker 2: I was like where are you going? I still don't,
Speaker 2: but it's like, oh, they they just like to run,
Speaker 2: like they just like to Is that.
Speaker 1: In favor of playing chess against humans or playing against run?
Speaker 2: I'm just like, do you have to know? Do you
Speaker 2: have to understand what a game of chess is? Like?
Speaker 2: Isn't the act of computing what the best chess move
Speaker 2: is like that is what chess is. Yeah, regardless of
Speaker 2: the outcome. That's that's a good argument, say, you know
Speaker 2: what I mean, that's what they like about it, the
Speaker 2: fact they like sitting there thinking about it. Yeah, not
Speaker 2: that it doesn't have a deeper meaning to those people,
Speaker 2: but it's like that's like what they enjoy about it
Speaker 2: is the you know what I mean, Like swimming laps
Speaker 2: seems like so freaking boring to me, but it's like
Speaker 2: that's what swimmers like about it is the meditative, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. I mean, this is the.
Speaker 1: Bigger philosophical question. Someone like John Seerl would argue that,
Speaker 1: like there is something more to playing chess or like
Speaker 1: understanding Chinese than just like writing the correct characters. But
Speaker 1: I think plenty of people like you would argue, like, no,
Speaker 1: it is the action that defines the thought process.
Speaker 2: Well, like that there is something more like within that
Speaker 2: action that, like the action thinking through it is the
Speaker 2: ultimate form of it. So are you saying, like just
Speaker 2: my computers are thinking or no, I don't know. I
Speaker 2: think they're playing chess. They are playing chess. I think
Speaker 2: they are playing chess. I don't know if they're thinking.
Speaker 1: I think just like a fun thing about about the
Speaker 1: mechanical turk is do you remember a Tesla we robot
Speaker 1: event in twenty twenty four when they had like Tesla
Speaker 1: bots they call it, I guess they're called Optimists, but they.
Speaker 2: Were electronic drinks.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but they're actually tele operated by humans.
Speaker 2: Yes. Do you remember when Amazon tried to do a
Speaker 2: whole grocery store where you didn't have to like do
Speaker 2: check out Amazon, just walk away? Wait, but I want
Speaker 2: to finish this point, yes, because I was just about
Speaker 2: to say it was the exact same.
Speaker 1: Thing where like it actually is people keeping track of it. Yes, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's not robots. Yeah, it's just people.
Speaker 2: And it is the same as the Tesla the things,
Speaker 2: and it was just it's like the same way that
Speaker 2: RC cars work. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I just think it's very funny that, like it's been
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty years since more than it's been
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty years since the mechanical turk, and
Speaker 1: Tesla was still doing a mechanical turk just as like
Speaker 1: a better looking robot.
Speaker 2: I would say, equally looking. I don't think those Tesla
Speaker 2: bots are particularly cool looking.
Speaker 1: Well, Lizzie, that that's our show that's the story. That's
Speaker 1: the decade spanning story of them mechanicals.
Speaker 2: That is an epic odyssey of chessness. Who would you
Speaker 2: cast in the movie of this?
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, I mean it's the obvious one. I'm
Speaker 1: just think British period piece, but no need for it
Speaker 1: to be British. It could be anyway. Timothy Shallamy always
Speaker 1: Timothy Austin Butler, he has the juice.
Speaker 2: I think Austin Butler would be good as the Turk.
Speaker 2: As the Turk, he can do anything. He's kind of
Speaker 2: weak up the Lord. He can do anything. Yes, he's
Speaker 2: such a good creature that is built now. And maybe
Speaker 2: Anthony Hopkins as an inventor of some kind. Damn, I
Speaker 2: don't want that. It's pretty good, Lizzie. Where can the
Speaker 2: good people find you? The good people can find us
Speaker 2: as at Hoax the Podcast on Instagram and you can.
Speaker 1: Email us at Hoax Thepodcast at gmail dot com.
Speaker 2: If you know how to play chess, good for you.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's play online. I'll make a chess dot com
Speaker 1: account and we can play. Email me or you know,
Speaker 1: go on the Instagram, follow us and dm us here
Speaker 1: chest log in and I'll play you online.
Speaker 2: Yes, and I will watch.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for listening. Please, if you like
Speaker 1: this podcast enjoy listening to it, please rate, review and subscribe,
Speaker 1: vibe and.
Speaker 2: Please hoax responsibly.
Speaker 4: Bye.
Speaker 2: Hoax is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our hosts are
Speaker 2: Danas Schortz and Lizzie Logan. Our executive producers are Matt
Speaker 2: Frederick and Trevor Young, with supervising producer Rima L. Kali
Speaker 2: and producers Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk. Our theme music
Speaker 2: was composed by Laine Montgomery. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
Speaker 2: visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get
Speaker 2: your podcasts. Thanks for listening.