WEBVTT - Scams, Hoaxes and Technological Flim Flam 0:00:04.120 --> 0:00:07.160 Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how 0:00:07.200 --> 0:00:13.680 stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.760 --> 0:00:16.479 I am your host, Jonathan Strickland, executive producer here at 0:00:16.480 --> 0:00:18.919 how Stuff Works, and I love all things tech. And 0:00:19.000 --> 0:00:23.279 today we have a very special guest co host. I 0:00:23.360 --> 0:00:26.320 mentioned that he would be joining us back on episode 0:00:26.360 --> 0:00:29.600 one thousand. This is episode one thousand one. Welcome Ben 0:00:29.920 --> 0:00:33.599 Bowland to the show. Thanks for having me or Jonathan, 0:00:33.680 --> 0:00:36.199 It's always a pleasure to hang out with you on 0:00:36.320 --> 0:00:40.160 Tech Stuff. And I'm starting to wonder, quick question, am 0:00:40.200 --> 0:00:44.720 I the most frequently recurring out of yes, you are 0:00:44.800 --> 0:00:47.680 most frequently recurring guest. If I were to, I can't 0:00:47.720 --> 0:00:50.600 count Lauren because she was an actual co host, true, 0:00:50.760 --> 0:00:53.320 So I have to just count the times that she's 0:00:53.360 --> 0:00:58.000 been co host, post regular, gig, post host, post host. 0:00:58.400 --> 0:01:02.560 So I believe, if I remember correctly, you were number one, 0:01:03.080 --> 0:01:06.160 and right behind you was Joe McCormick. Oh yeah, actually 0:01:06.160 --> 0:01:08.720 Scott Benjamin actually was right behind you. Then Joe McCormick 0:01:08.760 --> 0:01:11.240 was after him. Oh man, Well, you know, I think 0:01:11.319 --> 0:01:14.440 the world of both of those guys. I was interested 0:01:14.560 --> 0:01:18.600 because we have you know, as as I think a 0:01:18.600 --> 0:01:22.720 lot of our fellow Tech Stuff listeners know we interact 0:01:22.800 --> 0:01:27.160 on numerous shows, and we always sometimes sometimes unplanned, sometimes 0:01:27.200 --> 0:01:30.440 I've planned, and we always have a We always have 0:01:30.480 --> 0:01:33.600 a heck of a time. And off air earlier, you 0:01:33.720 --> 0:01:37.080 had invited me to come hang out with you as 0:01:37.200 --> 0:01:42.880 we explore a topic that is of particular interest to me, 0:01:43.040 --> 0:01:45.760 you know, because I host a show called Stuff they 0:01:45.760 --> 0:01:48.320 don't want you to know. Yeah, exactly. Over an episode 0:01:48.320 --> 0:01:51.080 one thousand, I talked about the scientific method, I talked 0:01:51.080 --> 0:01:54.520 about skeptical thinking, critical thinking, that sort of stuff, and 0:01:54.560 --> 0:01:56.840 I wanted to do an episode that kind of highlights 0:01:56.840 --> 0:02:00.080 why that is so important, not just in tech, but 0:02:00.200 --> 0:02:03.559 you know, in general. But because this is tech stuff, 0:02:03.600 --> 0:02:05.880 we're gonna look at it from a tech perspective and 0:02:05.920 --> 0:02:08.200 stuff they don't want you to know. Obviously. You guys 0:02:08.240 --> 0:02:12.519 cover a lot of topics where there are varying degrees 0:02:12.560 --> 0:02:15.240 of critical thinking that have been put toward them over 0:02:15.280 --> 0:02:20.240 the years, from from getting down to debunking something all 0:02:20.280 --> 0:02:23.800 the way to uh, we don't have enough information to 0:02:23.880 --> 0:02:27.239 draw conclusions, which is totally valid by the way, You know, 0:02:27.320 --> 0:02:29.960 I don't I don't decry out if someone says, well, 0:02:30.160 --> 0:02:32.679 I just don't know, because I just don't have the information. 0:02:32.720 --> 0:02:34.640 I think that's a responsible thing all the way to 0:02:34.880 --> 0:02:39.440 the credulous right, people buying into things without the sufficient 0:02:39.720 --> 0:02:44.840 support necessary to justify that that perspective, And so we're 0:02:44.840 --> 0:02:48.320 gonna talk today about some stories in tech that fall 0:02:48.320 --> 0:02:50.280 into that category. Now, some of the stuff we're gonna 0:02:50.320 --> 0:02:54.200 cover our outright hoaxes or scams where the person who 0:02:54.240 --> 0:02:57.520 was perpetrating it did so knowingly like they were actually 0:02:57.520 --> 0:03:01.079 setting out to deceive, whether for entertainment purposes, as will 0:03:01.120 --> 0:03:05.840 be our first entry, or for the filthy, filthy lucre 0:03:06.320 --> 0:03:10.440 as I like to say, scratch the scratch, yeah, or 0:03:10.880 --> 0:03:13.600 whether it was something where someone thought they were onto 0:03:13.639 --> 0:03:17.080 something turns out there was nothing there, but they spent 0:03:17.240 --> 0:03:21.600 a great deal of time pursuing it, sometimes even going 0:03:21.639 --> 0:03:25.639 so far as to promote the pursuit of this thing 0:03:26.040 --> 0:03:30.520 without first actually having ascertained that there really was something 0:03:30.560 --> 0:03:33.120 to talk about. And it may very well have been 0:03:33.160 --> 0:03:37.360 a completely honest mistake, an embarrassing one, but an honest one. 0:03:38.000 --> 0:03:40.360 And the first one I wanted to talk about is 0:03:40.600 --> 0:03:44.160 one of my favorite stories in all of tech. Now, Ben, 0:03:44.200 --> 0:03:46.640 you may not know this about me, uh, When I 0:03:46.680 --> 0:03:50.040 was a kid. To the shock of no one who 0:03:50.040 --> 0:03:55.000 has ever met me, I had a fascination with stage magic. No, 0:03:55.360 --> 0:03:59.560 not you. You know I'm also a juggler, so I do. 0:03:59.720 --> 0:04:01.760 I I'm glad you got in front of that before 0:04:01.880 --> 0:04:06.480 I said it, because it's It's true folks, at pretty 0:04:06.560 --> 0:04:09.560 much any time, and the how stuff works off as 0:04:09.960 --> 0:04:13.640 you can walk by Jonathan, and if you happen to 0:04:13.680 --> 0:04:15.960 have like three things, you could say, hey, do you 0:04:15.960 --> 0:04:18.560 want to juggle these? I've asked you this multiple types. 0:04:18.640 --> 0:04:22.640 You've never said no. Well, I considered a personal challenge. 0:04:23.000 --> 0:04:24.640 Uh yeah, I actually just the other day it was 0:04:24.720 --> 0:04:28.200 juggling tangerines. Uh yeah, that just sort of happens. But 0:04:28.279 --> 0:04:30.880 stage magic, stage magic. So I was fascinated by that 0:04:30.960 --> 0:04:33.720 as a kid too. I love the theatricality of it. 0:04:33.839 --> 0:04:36.599 I love the secretive nature of it. I mean, anytime 0:04:36.640 --> 0:04:38.880 you have any kind of and you know this from 0:04:38.880 --> 0:04:41.279 covering stuff they don't want you to know. Anytime you 0:04:41.320 --> 0:04:45.200 have a group that has kind of an insular, quiet 0:04:45.720 --> 0:04:48.880 society where they share information with each other but not 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:51.680 to anyone on the outside, that level of mystique is 0:04:51.720 --> 0:04:55.200 incredibly attractive, right, Like you just sit there and think 0:04:55.279 --> 0:04:57.919 I want to be in the room where it happens 0:04:57.920 --> 0:05:02.279 if I recording lin Manuel Miranda. So this first example 0:05:02.360 --> 0:05:06.040 is the Turk. This was ultimately, this was meant to 0:05:06.080 --> 0:05:10.240 be a magic trick. It was not necessarily meant to 0:05:10.320 --> 0:05:13.359 be just a scam, you know. It was meant to 0:05:13.360 --> 0:05:17.240 be like an entertainment, a diversion. And it was the 0:05:17.279 --> 0:05:21.760 brainchild of Wolfgang von Kimberlin, who is a civil servant 0:05:22.120 --> 0:05:26.359 in eighteenth century Austria Hungary. He was in service to 0:05:26.440 --> 0:05:30.880 the Empress Maria Teresa. So Maria Teresa, good old Mary. 0:05:31.080 --> 0:05:33.920 She has a magician come by, you know, he pulls 0:05:33.920 --> 0:05:36.960 some rabbits out of hats, saw some courtiers into whatever. 0:05:37.640 --> 0:05:41.839 And she turns to Wolfgang. He says, oh, wolf wasn't 0:05:41.880 --> 0:05:45.680 that just as the most entertaining magic you ever saw? 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:48.120 And wolf gangs like I could do better than that, 0:05:48.839 --> 0:05:54.320 And she said really, yeah, yeah, and she said prove it. 0:05:54.400 --> 0:05:58.720 You got six months. So he goes off and for 0:05:58.800 --> 0:06:02.240 six months he's working on creating an illusion, and his 0:06:02.320 --> 0:06:06.479 illusion is the Turk. Now, what it looks like is 0:06:06.600 --> 0:06:09.440 a big cabinet. I'm talking like like something that you 0:06:09.440 --> 0:06:12.760 would see like a sideboard. It's about waist high. It's 0:06:12.800 --> 0:06:15.159 like a desk, yeah yeah, kind of like a desk, 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:19.240 and then behind it stands appears to stand anyway, a 0:06:19.360 --> 0:06:22.600 human figure dressed as a turk. Dressed that way because 0:06:23.480 --> 0:06:27.039 in the seventeen hundreds in Europe people thought that if 0:06:27.080 --> 0:06:28.880 you were going to be doing magic, then you should 0:06:28.920 --> 0:06:31.600 be dressed in Turkish attire, because that's where magic happened, 0:06:32.000 --> 0:06:36.600 ye enlightened. So he's dressed as a turk. He even 0:06:36.640 --> 0:06:40.080 had a long clay pipe in one hand upon first 0:06:40.120 --> 0:06:44.440 being unveiled. And on the top of this cabinet or 0:06:44.520 --> 0:06:49.159 dusk is a chessboard. Von Kimplin brought this out to 0:06:49.560 --> 0:06:52.640 show off to the court of Teresa. And he opens 0:06:52.720 --> 0:06:55.240 up the cabinet on one side. It reveals all these 0:06:55.240 --> 0:06:58.760 different clockwork gears. He opens up the other side. There's 0:06:58.760 --> 0:07:01.160 a little cushion in there, but there's not really anything else. 0:07:01.200 --> 0:07:03.760 He even holds a candle on the opposite side of 0:07:03.760 --> 0:07:06.200 the cabinet to let light show through, to show that 0:07:06.240 --> 0:07:08.640 there's not a mirror or anything in the middle. Right, 0:07:08.839 --> 0:07:12.640 closes it all up, puts the the cushion under one 0:07:12.840 --> 0:07:16.800 arm of the turk, and then invites someone to come 0:07:16.880 --> 0:07:21.520 up and play chess. So at that stage you get 0:07:22.120 --> 0:07:24.160 one of the courtiers. He comes up there and plays 0:07:24.160 --> 0:07:25.800 a game of chess, and within half an hour of 0:07:25.800 --> 0:07:29.800 the turk moving on its own accord. This this automaton 0:07:29.960 --> 0:07:35.240 clockwork man right, the the the semblance, the mechanical hand 0:07:35.360 --> 0:07:38.480 is making the actual movement. Yes, it's actually moving. The 0:07:38.600 --> 0:07:43.160 arm itself moves over, the hand grips the piece, moves 0:07:43.200 --> 0:07:48.680 it to the appropriate square. And uh. The only instruction 0:07:49.120 --> 0:07:52.560 Von Kimblin gave to the courtier was make sure whenever 0:07:52.600 --> 0:07:56.080 you place the piece down, you do so squarely in 0:07:56.120 --> 0:08:00.760 the center of the square you're moving to. Because I've 0:08:00.800 --> 0:08:04.640 aligned this machine so that it will go precisely at 0:08:04.680 --> 0:08:07.240 those those coordinates. You know, if you were offside, it 0:08:07.280 --> 0:08:10.680 would miss because it's it's totally clockwork, and it makes 0:08:10.680 --> 0:08:13.440 sense from the audience perspective. At this point they go, Okay, 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:15.760 that's how machines work. Yeah, well, I mean you think 0:08:15.800 --> 0:08:17.840 about You're like, well, if you these days, we would 0:08:17.880 --> 0:08:20.680 call it programming, right, you would program the machine to 0:08:20.720 --> 0:08:23.480 be able to move a piece, but you wouldn't waste 0:08:23.480 --> 0:08:26.800 time programming the machine to pick up places where a 0:08:26.840 --> 0:08:34.120 piece would not be right, So the Turk is victorious. 0:08:34.160 --> 0:08:36.240 It wins, and it's able to beat most people within 0:08:36.400 --> 0:08:41.640 half an hour. It would go on to great acclaim 0:08:41.640 --> 0:08:46.400 both in Europe and beyond. Uh von Kemplin would eventually, 0:08:46.559 --> 0:08:49.199 you know, he would pass away, and it ended up 0:08:49.360 --> 0:08:55.000 in the belongings of another entrepreneur who used it to 0:08:55.040 --> 0:08:58.840 bring it to exhibitions and to kind of make a 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:00.920 almost like a like a pt Barna mess kind of 0:09:00.960 --> 0:09:04.360 show up out of it. And Uh famous people played 0:09:04.400 --> 0:09:08.640 against the Turk. Ben Franklin played a game, did not win. 0:09:09.520 --> 0:09:14.280 Um Napoleon Bonaparte famously tested the turk. So the story 0:09:14.320 --> 0:09:19.480 with Bonaparte is that he played a game and purposefully 0:09:19.520 --> 0:09:24.760 made an illegal move and just testing to see what 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:26.560 is this turk going to do if I make an 0:09:26.559 --> 0:09:29.160 illegal movie a couple of times, three times and on 0:09:29.320 --> 0:09:32.760 the third time, the turk, which could also move its 0:09:32.800 --> 0:09:34.240 eyes back and forth, it can move its head a 0:09:34.280 --> 0:09:37.199 little bit, and then it can move one arm, uh 0:09:37.559 --> 0:09:40.560 swept its arm across the board, knocking all the pieces off. 0:09:41.120 --> 0:09:42.839 And then of course there's like there's that you can 0:09:42.880 --> 0:09:45.680 just imagine, like if you're thinking of it in movie terms, 0:09:45.679 --> 0:09:48.240 there's the hush that falls over the crowd, and everyone's 0:09:48.240 --> 0:09:50.520 waiting to see what happens, and the Napoleon just starts laughing, 0:09:50.559 --> 0:09:52.760 and everyone's like, oh ha ha, oh, it wasn't that 0:09:52.800 --> 0:09:55.520 funny when it was totally not funny a second earlier, 0:09:55.840 --> 0:09:58.199 like no one was sure someone was gonna lose their head. 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:02.160 So other people who who witnessed it would include Edgar 0:10:02.200 --> 0:10:05.200 Allan Poe, who was convinced that there was a human 0:10:05.320 --> 0:10:09.000 controlling this clockwork mechanism, but he didn't He wasn't sure 0:10:09.040 --> 0:10:11.640 exactly how. At first, he started to think about how 0:10:11.640 --> 0:10:15.160 it might be possible, even drew up some uh some 0:10:15.600 --> 0:10:19.520 pamphlets about it, and more or less we believe he 0:10:19.559 --> 0:10:21.880 got it, you know, kind of right. He figured it out, 0:10:21.960 --> 0:10:24.600 figured it out more or less it became the basis 0:10:24.720 --> 0:10:29.800 of detective stories in a way, his approach. But ultimately, yes, 0:10:29.840 --> 0:10:32.040 it was a trick. It was not clockwork. It was 0:10:32.120 --> 0:10:34.320 not some sort of device that you would wind up 0:10:34.400 --> 0:10:39.959 and then it could actually witness a move process of 0:10:40.040 --> 0:10:42.880 information and then make a move on its own. It 0:10:43.000 --> 0:10:48.320 was more or less a very complex puppet. And from 0:10:48.360 --> 0:10:51.280 what we can gather based upon the drawings von Kimblin 0:10:51.360 --> 0:10:57.400 left behind uh, the operator. It was probably hidden in 0:10:57.480 --> 0:11:00.440 the bottom of the cabinet. It was like a false bottom. Okay, 0:11:00.559 --> 0:11:03.000 so you have a very thick bottom of this cabinet 0:11:03.040 --> 0:11:04.920 which was on castors, so you could roll it everywhere 0:11:04.960 --> 0:11:07.079 and no one knew how heavy it was. And then 0:11:07.120 --> 0:11:10.480 once you close the cabinet up, they could slide out 0:11:10.520 --> 0:11:15.240 from underneath and then operate all the pieces from inside. 0:11:15.240 --> 0:11:18.400 They use levers to move the arms. I'm not entirely 0:11:18.440 --> 0:11:20.960 certain what the mechanism was so that they could actually 0:11:21.080 --> 0:11:24.200 view where the pieces were on the board. Yeah, that's 0:11:24.240 --> 0:11:27.040 the one of the most interesting parts. And it has 0:11:27.080 --> 0:11:30.000 to be I don't know, in the in the reproduction 0:11:30.280 --> 0:11:35.400 pictures we can see it feels like it would. The 0:11:35.440 --> 0:11:39.920 simplest answer would be some sort of one way mirror 0:11:40.000 --> 0:11:43.760 kind of thing where they could see which pieces. The 0:11:43.760 --> 0:11:45.960 only problem there is that, I mean, you have to 0:11:45.960 --> 0:11:48.080 pay a really close attention and make sure you know 0:11:48.160 --> 0:11:51.040 which pieces what right, and how can you differentiate you know, 0:11:51.080 --> 0:11:54.040 if they all look like just a peg, yeah, a peg? 0:11:54.600 --> 0:11:56.560 Would there be some sort I was thinking about this. 0:11:56.640 --> 0:11:58.600 Would there be some sort of marking on the bottom 0:11:58.640 --> 0:12:01.280 that they could see. I mean, like if you are 0:12:01.320 --> 0:12:05.480 a true chess like genius. You could just keep track 0:12:05.520 --> 0:12:07.880 of which piece was moved, and then you know what 0:12:07.920 --> 0:12:10.240 piece it was because you know what the starting position was. 0:12:10.760 --> 0:12:15.400 Although in more recent demonstrations, the way this has worked 0:12:15.640 --> 0:12:20.360 is John Gone, who created a a replica we just mentioned. 0:12:20.720 --> 0:12:23.600 He has a replica of this that's in Los Angeles, California. 0:12:24.200 --> 0:12:26.720 He apparently has a workshop that is phenomenal to visit 0:12:26.800 --> 0:12:29.600 and no, you can't go there, and I'm so upset. 0:12:30.040 --> 0:12:33.440 I'm so upset because it looks amazing, but it looks 0:12:33.480 --> 0:12:35.520 like it's an invitation only kind of thing. Like it's 0:12:35.559 --> 0:12:39.080 it's sort of like a magician's museum, not a not 0:12:39.160 --> 0:12:43.600 a museum of magic, but a museum for magicians kind 0:12:43.600 --> 0:12:46.680 of in the crowd, I think, because he designs illusions 0:12:46.720 --> 0:12:50.160 for some of the most famous magicians out there, like 0:12:50.200 --> 0:12:54.560 Chris Angel and David Copperfield and folks like that. Freak. Yes, 0:12:55.360 --> 0:12:58.040 John Gone. John Gone has designed some of the most 0:12:58.960 --> 0:13:04.480 elaborate illusions. But he built this replica and in his 0:13:04.840 --> 0:13:07.679 versions where he's shown it off, he's had a book 0:13:08.000 --> 0:13:11.839 of famous end games and a and he invites a 0:13:11.920 --> 0:13:14.160 chess master to come up and play against the Turk 0:13:14.480 --> 0:13:17.600 and the chess master reaches in, looks at the book, 0:13:17.880 --> 0:13:20.760 picks out an end game, they set up the board 0:13:21.520 --> 0:13:24.719 for that particular end game, and they play from there. Well, 0:13:24.760 --> 0:13:26.560 if it's if it's an end game that's out of 0:13:26.559 --> 0:13:29.200 a book, and I'm assuming you're not doing a forced 0:13:29.960 --> 0:13:33.440 uh choice upon the chess master, they have open choice 0:13:33.840 --> 0:13:38.200 because there are magic tricks where yeah, it's a card 0:13:38.240 --> 0:13:41.600 force is a well known way. I mean, there's lots 0:13:41.600 --> 0:13:43.080 of different ways of doing this, but it's a well 0:13:43.160 --> 0:13:45.880 known way of making it look like someone's chosen a card, 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:48.240 but in fact they've picked the card you've already chosen 0:13:48.280 --> 0:13:51.360 for them. Makes makes finding a card a lot easier 0:13:51.400 --> 0:13:53.040 when you already know what it's going to be before 0:13:53.080 --> 0:13:55.800 the trick even starts. So I don't know if it 0:13:55.840 --> 0:13:57.960 was like that or not, but if presuming it wasn't, 0:13:58.520 --> 0:14:01.200 then there must be some way to to see the 0:14:01.280 --> 0:14:07.000 board beyond just uh knowing which knowing which squares are occupied, 0:14:07.080 --> 0:14:09.520 because if it's an end game, that means not all 0:14:09.520 --> 0:14:12.800 the pieces are already are there, right, only certain pieces 0:14:12.800 --> 0:14:14.240 are going to be there, and they're not at their 0:14:14.280 --> 0:14:16.560 starting position exactly, So then you would have to have 0:14:16.640 --> 0:14:18.560 some way of being able to see what the board was. 0:14:18.640 --> 0:14:20.480 Now you might have some sort of periscope kind of 0:14:20.520 --> 0:14:23.840 thing built into the figure so that you're using mirrors 0:14:23.880 --> 0:14:26.240 to get a look that way. But no matter what, 0:14:26.840 --> 0:14:29.080 it must have also taken quite a bit of dexterity 0:14:29.280 --> 0:14:31.560 to move the arm, like I just think of the 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:35.880 claw games from like Amusements, where it's something along those 0:14:35.880 --> 0:14:38.960 lines of trying to move the arm exactly because based 0:14:39.040 --> 0:14:43.520 upon the images, the the inner workings of the Turk 0:14:43.600 --> 0:14:48.200 were in fact, uh like cat gut ropes and and 0:14:48.400 --> 0:14:50.760 pulley systems and things. It wasn't It wasn't like it 0:14:50.840 --> 0:14:54.720 was a wooden suit that you could somehow slip into. 0:14:55.280 --> 0:14:57.720 And the quarters are cramped in that cabinet even if 0:14:57.720 --> 0:15:00.320 they get out of the false bottom. In makes me 0:15:00.360 --> 0:15:04.040 think that it makes me imagine that there must have 0:15:04.040 --> 0:15:07.320 been some down on his or her luck chess master 0:15:07.640 --> 0:15:13.800 who accepted this strange occupation. And and the other thing 0:15:14.000 --> 0:15:19.560 that's entirely fascinatings that even today, to your point, we 0:15:19.960 --> 0:15:25.280 don't know everything about the Turk. We just know that 0:15:25.760 --> 0:15:28.160 we know that there's a hoax, right, And I wanted 0:15:28.160 --> 0:15:31.720 to ask you were those gears entirely ornamental. I'm pretty 0:15:31.720 --> 0:15:33.880 sure most of them were. Actually, I think most of 0:15:33.920 --> 0:15:38.040 the gears were meant to give it this look of clockwork. Right, 0:15:38.160 --> 0:15:40.680 that's what happened. It's it's yeah, it's all the it's 0:15:40.760 --> 0:15:43.360 it's scientific theater is what it is. You know, we 0:15:43.400 --> 0:15:47.080 think of like like security theater. You know, the idea 0:15:47.200 --> 0:15:49.760 that you put on the appearance of security and that 0:15:49.800 --> 0:15:53.680 will be enough to mollify people into thinking they are 0:15:53.840 --> 0:15:56.920 in a secure situation. Same sort of thing with with us. 0:15:57.040 --> 0:16:01.280 You have the trappings of authority, and that convinces people, 0:16:01.320 --> 0:16:03.440 oh yeah, no, this is on the up and up 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:06.640 and again that is a way of disarming people from 0:16:06.680 --> 0:16:11.280 being critical thinkers. Right. Um. The original Turk, by the way, 0:16:11.360 --> 0:16:13.520 was destroyed in the fire in the eighteen hundreds, which 0:16:13.560 --> 0:16:15.880 is why we have to you know, there's a replica 0:16:16.200 --> 0:16:19.200 and it's based off of the what little what few 0:16:19.200 --> 0:16:25.320 designs managed to survive. But uh, it's it's sort of 0:16:25.360 --> 0:16:28.920 a best guess that that's how the original worked. Um. 0:16:29.040 --> 0:16:32.960 John Gon did say that von Kemblin was incredibly prescient 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:38.680 and created elements of illusion that a lot of historians 0:16:38.720 --> 0:16:42.120 didn't think were really invented until a century after that. 0:16:42.520 --> 0:16:44.800 So that's pretty pretty interesting that the guy. The guy 0:16:44.880 --> 0:16:49.160 really was a pretty clever inventor. And um, yeah, and 0:16:49.240 --> 0:16:54.160 again I don't necessarily believe on Kemberlin himself wanted to 0:16:54.200 --> 0:16:58.520 put the turk forward as a legitimate this is a 0:16:58.640 --> 0:17:02.240 clockwork chest lair. It was more like this is more 0:17:02.320 --> 0:17:05.840 in the style of a magic trick, where you don't 0:17:05.880 --> 0:17:09.960 acknowledge that it's a trick because that takes the theatricality 0:17:09.960 --> 0:17:12.240 out of it. But you're also not trying to go 0:17:12.320 --> 0:17:16.760 around claiming that you can build clockwork people. Right this 0:17:16.760 --> 0:17:19.480 this feels like it was much more of a a 0:17:19.680 --> 0:17:22.800 coup in the court for him, you know, just it's 0:17:22.880 --> 0:17:28.720 an attempt to show off his intelligence and acumen. And 0:17:28.760 --> 0:17:35.440 nobody is genuinely convinced that there is some sentient thing 0:17:35.600 --> 0:17:38.840 made out of clockwork gears that is better at chess 0:17:38.840 --> 0:17:41.679 than you meet bag. I mean, it's it's a possibility. 0:17:41.720 --> 0:17:44.080 Some of them were only because clockwork was such a 0:17:44.080 --> 0:17:48.520 relatively new type of technology in I didn't think about that. 0:17:48.600 --> 0:17:50.639 Maybe you're right, you know, you're also talking about the 0:17:50.920 --> 0:17:55.560 very just before the the Industrial Revolution, right, Uh, it's 0:17:55.600 --> 0:18:01.120 post Renaissance, it's no enlightenment. You're talking about people wondering 0:18:01.240 --> 0:18:06.199 where where the limits are to ingenuity. And when you 0:18:06.280 --> 0:18:12.200 have interesting inventions being proposed and coming out so rapidly 0:18:12.320 --> 0:18:16.360 in such a such a compact timeline, then you could 0:18:16.520 --> 0:18:19.520 kind of see where someone could be a little credulous 0:18:19.520 --> 0:18:23.159 and think maybe there, maybe someone did figure out away. Like, 0:18:23.280 --> 0:18:26.320 after all, chess is based off math, right, so if 0:18:26.359 --> 0:18:28.959 it's just if it's just processing math and someone Now 0:18:29.000 --> 0:18:30.840 keep in mind, this is a hundred years before the 0:18:30.920 --> 0:18:33.919 difference engine or the analytical engine, it's before Babbage. But 0:18:34.000 --> 0:18:38.199 still you can kind of imagine that sort of possible 0:18:38.280 --> 0:18:41.679 theory going in someone's head, didn't he He did, And 0:18:41.720 --> 0:18:45.359 in fact, uh, he also was pretty darn sure the 0:18:45.400 --> 0:18:50.360 turk was being controlled by a person. However, he thought, huh, 0:18:50.560 --> 0:18:56.720 a machine that can process information. That sounds interesting. And 0:18:56.720 --> 0:19:00.320 of course Babbage would later go on to first pose 0:19:00.400 --> 0:19:04.520 the difference Engine, which would eventually be abandoned, and then 0:19:04.560 --> 0:19:09.000 he would propose an even more glorious machine, the analytic Engine, 0:19:09.640 --> 0:19:12.800 that would would have been the first mechanical computer if 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:15.600 it had ever been completed during his lifetime. And of 0:19:15.680 --> 0:19:19.560 course I can't mention Babbage without also mentioning Ada Lovelace, 0:19:19.640 --> 0:19:23.639 Lord Byron's daughter. Ada Lovelace, was a mathematician who worked 0:19:23.640 --> 0:19:27.520 with Babbage, and she even proposed using his machine to 0:19:28.200 --> 0:19:33.639 uh to use mathematics to express different ideas, not just 0:19:33.800 --> 0:19:38.359 mathematical ideas, but using math to express things like poetry 0:19:38.400 --> 0:19:42.560 and music and imagery. She was talking about coding in 0:19:42.560 --> 0:19:48.920 a time well before electro mechanical computers were created, let 0:19:48.920 --> 0:19:54.639 alone electronic computers. So phenomenal people, and you could argue 0:19:54.680 --> 0:19:59.120 that at least some of their ingenuity was sparked by 0:19:59.200 --> 0:20:05.639 this fake clock. We're a chess player, and lest we forget, 0:20:05.680 --> 0:20:07.920 I feel like we need to emphasize this one more 0:20:07.960 --> 0:20:10.280 time before we move on. One of the great things 0:20:10.320 --> 0:20:13.280 about the Turk is it was not made for malevolent 0:20:13.520 --> 0:20:16.479 purposes it was It was not made It was not 0:20:16.560 --> 0:20:21.080 made to to steal money. It was not made as 0:20:21.480 --> 0:20:23.880 a cash grab type thing, unlike some of the other 0:20:23.920 --> 0:20:26.280 ones we're gonna be talking about. One last thing I 0:20:26.280 --> 0:20:29.520 will mention before we transition to one that definitely was 0:20:29.600 --> 0:20:33.280 more of a cash grab. Uh So, the Turk also 0:20:33.400 --> 0:20:38.360 lends its name to something that Amazon has. Amazon Amazon 0:20:38.440 --> 0:20:40.359 has the turk. They have the mechanical turk, which is 0:20:40.960 --> 0:20:44.760 uh Amazon's the turk is where they use human beings 0:20:45.080 --> 0:20:50.919 to process request certain information because it just from a 0:20:50.960 --> 0:20:54.439 financial side, made more sense to employ human beings to 0:20:54.560 --> 0:20:58.400 do the work than to create computer systems that could 0:20:58.400 --> 0:21:01.239 do the work and be cause it's humans who are 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:04.119 doing the work, but it's through an interface that is 0:21:04.200 --> 0:21:09.360 more commonly associated with things like search engines. They call it, 0:21:09.720 --> 0:21:13.760 they refer to the turk because it's actually a human 0:21:13.800 --> 0:21:17.920 that's that's powering the thing, which I thought was pretty clever. Now, 0:21:18.119 --> 0:21:21.000 the first one we're gonna talk about where someone's actually 0:21:21.800 --> 0:21:27.360 trying to scam folks would be Charles Redheffer and his 0:21:27.680 --> 0:21:33.480 proposed perpetual motion machine. Now, perpetual motion is let's let's 0:21:33.520 --> 0:21:35.120 let's just go ahead and shoot this route of the gate. 0:21:35.119 --> 0:21:38.480 Perpetual motion is, as far as we can tell, impossible 0:21:38.800 --> 0:21:41.720 based upon our our knowledge of the laws of thermodynamics. 0:21:42.320 --> 0:21:47.280 So with the laws of thermodynamics, that that explains things like, uh, 0:21:47.520 --> 0:21:50.560 energy within a system. Right, if you have a system, 0:21:50.680 --> 0:21:53.520 a closed system, so there's nothing coming into it, there's 0:21:53.520 --> 0:21:56.080 nothing going out of it, no energy is going to 0:21:56.080 --> 0:21:59.600 be created or destroyed. It cannot You can't just create 0:21:59.680 --> 0:22:01.920 or dist energy. You can convert from one kind of 0:22:02.040 --> 0:22:05.439 energy to another. You can convert matter into energy and 0:22:05.600 --> 0:22:10.159 vice versa if you have you know, like nuclear bombs 0:22:10.160 --> 0:22:13.080 and stuff. But in a system, you can't create a 0:22:13.160 --> 0:22:16.760 destroy energy. If you set a system into motion, Let's 0:22:16.800 --> 0:22:18.760 say let's just a wheel. Let's say we've got a 0:22:18.760 --> 0:22:23.560 wheel on an axle. We start spinning that wheel. That 0:22:23.600 --> 0:22:26.919 wheel is eventually gonna stop spinning. The reason being is 0:22:26.960 --> 0:22:32.520 that without additional energy put into that wheel, friction is 0:22:32.560 --> 0:22:36.280 going to result in more energy being lost to the system. 0:22:36.320 --> 0:22:39.760 Then is needed to keep the wheel spinning. Right, because 0:22:39.840 --> 0:22:42.600 you're gonna have pieces rubbing against each other, that's friction. 0:22:43.119 --> 0:22:45.840 You end up losing energy in the form of heat. Again, 0:22:46.040 --> 0:22:49.280 energy is not destroyed, it's just converted from kinetic energy 0:22:49.359 --> 0:22:53.040 into heat energy. First and second law the dynamics. Yes, 0:22:53.119 --> 0:22:55.960 so the heat dissipates. That means you have less energy 0:22:55.960 --> 0:22:58.119 in your system than when you started because your system 0:22:58.200 --> 0:23:01.360 is not truly closed. It's open, it's open to everything, right, 0:23:02.080 --> 0:23:05.000 So eventually the wheel will slow down and stop because 0:23:05.040 --> 0:23:12.879 of this drain on the system. So Charles Redheffer says, hey, 0:23:12.640 --> 0:23:16.160 I made one. I made a perpetual motion machine that 0:23:16.240 --> 0:23:19.000 if you if you start this sucker, it will just 0:23:19.080 --> 0:23:23.640 keep on going forever and ever and ever. And that 0:23:23.720 --> 0:23:27.560 flies in the face of the laws of thermodynamics. Now, if, 0:23:28.240 --> 0:23:31.440 by the way, you can lose energy, not just through friction, 0:23:31.920 --> 0:23:35.280 you can lose energy through sound too. Sound is energy, right, 0:23:35.359 --> 0:23:38.440 Sound is vibration. So if you have anything vibrating against 0:23:38.480 --> 0:23:42.040 anything else, that's energy that you're losing from your your system. 0:23:42.640 --> 0:23:45.119 If you have your your system hooked up to something 0:23:45.119 --> 0:23:48.320 like a battery or a power outlet, congratulations, that's not 0:23:48.320 --> 0:23:51.800 a perpetual motion machine because it's continuously drawing energy from 0:23:51.800 --> 0:23:56.720 a source. Right, energy is it is? It's it's more 0:23:56.800 --> 0:23:59.240