Speaker 1: Our world is full of the unexplainable, and if history
Speaker 1: is an open book, all of these amazing tales are
Speaker 1: right there on display, just waiting for us to explore.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the Cabinet of Curiosities. The cow had disappeared
Speaker 1: right before his eyes. It was March of and young
Speaker 1: Amile for a dawn, was standing in the field that
Speaker 1: he worked with his father in the small village of
Speaker 1: Glausel in central France. It was just by chance that
Speaker 1: he'd been looking in the right direction at all. The
Speaker 1: cow had been standing there one minute and next well,
Speaker 1: it was gone. Emil ran over to the spot where
Speaker 1: the cow had vanished from and discovered the reason why.
Speaker 1: There was a large hole in the ground. It had
Speaker 1: chosen that very moment open wide and had dropped out
Speaker 1: beneath the cow like a trap door in a Scooby
Speaker 1: Doo cartoon. Of course, their first priority was to get
Speaker 1: the cow back out, and that took a bit of time.
Speaker 1: Cows are heavy, after all, and they have a tendency
Speaker 1: to kick and fight. But they eventually managed to free
Speaker 1: the fallen beast from the pit, and that's when they
Speaker 1: got a good look at what was down there, and
Speaker 1: it baffled them. They could see bricks. Neat tidy rows
Speaker 1: of uniform bricks were visible in the soil and roots
Speaker 1: below the surface of the field, so Emil grabbed the
Speaker 1: shovel and began to dig around them. Soon enough, he
Speaker 1: and his father were standing in a small chamber with
Speaker 1: walls of brick and tiled floor, and there were objects inside.
Speaker 1: Word quickly spread. A local teacher visited the farm and
Speaker 1: alerted the government to the discovery. Local scholars began to
Speaker 1: flock to the farm for their chance in helping with
Speaker 1: the excavation. Over the next five years, the dig site
Speaker 1: was extended, eventually revealing a number of chambers, each with
Speaker 1: their own collection of artifacts. That's where things got strange. First,
Speaker 1: you have to remember that no one knew these chambers
Speaker 1: were there in the field until the cow had fallen
Speaker 1: through the ceiling of one of the rooms. But they
Speaker 1: were an odd collection of items that made that difficult
Speaker 1: to believe. Yes, while some of the items in the
Speaker 1: chamber dated back to the first century, others were much newer,
Speaker 1: possibly as recent as the fifteenth century. There has been
Speaker 1: a lot of controversy about the discovery over the years.
Speaker 1: Emil was accused of forging the entire site, but that
Speaker 1: claim was finally dismissed in court. More modern tools in
Speaker 1: the last couple of decades have allowed scientists to determine
Speaker 1: the true age of some of the oldest pottery there,
Speaker 1: dating back roughly two thousand years. There are bone fragments
Speaker 1: from the thirteenth century and ceramic tablets with Phoenician writing
Speaker 1: on them. It's like a potpourri of archaeological clues, making
Speaker 1: it very difficult to nail down exactly when the chambers
Speaker 1: were built. And none of that even comes close to
Speaker 1: the biggest question of all. Why Why was this set
Speaker 1: of chambers constructed? Why did someone want to gather up
Speaker 1: so many of these seemingly disparate items and store them
Speaker 1: all in one place, And why were they hidden away,
Speaker 1: buried beneath the surface of a field in the middle
Speaker 1: of France. Nearly a century later. The answer is the
Speaker 1: same as it's always been. We just don't know. They
Speaker 1: built a machine that could play chess. Now I understand
Speaker 1: that's not exactly earth shattering news. We live in an
Speaker 1: era where Deep Blue from IBM and Alpha zero from
Speaker 1: Deep Mind can be just about any opponent placed in
Speaker 1: front of them clearly. Artificial intelligence has grown by leaps
Speaker 1: and bounds, allowing us to pack more and more power
Speaker 1: into the devices we use each day. But this wasn't
Speaker 1: a sleek, modern processor fueled brain. It was a wooden
Speaker 1: box and a mechanical dummy. They called it the Turk,
Speaker 1: and it was built in Vienna around seventeen seventy. Think
Speaker 1: of it like a large wooden chest four ft long,
Speaker 1: two ft wide and about three ft tall. Hefty for sure,
Speaker 1: but it served as a desk upon which a chessboard sat,
Speaker 1: and behind that desk stood the Turk himself. Well him
Speaker 1: might be stretching it. The Turk was a mechanical man,
Speaker 1: an automaton if you want to be technical about it,
Speaker 1: and this eighteenth century robot could play chess. The man
Speaker 1: who invented it was Barren Wolfgang von Kemperlin, an inventor
Speaker 1: from Hungary who was born in seventeen thirty four. Armed
Speaker 1: with this amazing device, he traveled all across Europe, pitting
Speaker 1: his invention against the best chess players he could find.
Speaker 1: He would begin each match by opening all of the
Speaker 1: cabinet doors beneath the desktops, so everyone gathered could see
Speaker 1: his brilliant mechanical engineering, firsthand gears and cogs and drums
Speaker 1: and levers, all of it served to power the Turk
Speaker 1: as it picked up chess pieces and made move after
Speaker 1: move against the humans who chose to play it, and
Speaker 1: most of the time the robot one. It said that
Speaker 1: the Turk defeated Napoleon, Benjamin Franklin, even Empress Catherine the
Speaker 1: First of Russia. It was so popular that after von
Speaker 1: Kempelin died in eighteen o four, the Turk was sold
Speaker 1: to a Bavarian musician who carried on the constant touring
Speaker 1: in the eighteen twenties. That tour included America. In fact,
Speaker 1: the author Edgar Allen Poe watched one of these demonstrations
Speaker 1: himself in eighteen thirty six, and then went on to
Speaker 1: write an article about it in a periodical called The
Speaker 1: Southern Literary Messenger, which is ironic because just a few
Speaker 1: years later the Turk would be purchased by Postoned physician
Speaker 1: John Circely Mitchell. All told the Turk was a source
Speaker 1: of entertainment and delight for nearly seventy years and inspired
Speaker 1: a lot of questions and a lot of wonder which
Speaker 1: I have to admit, is still pretty attractive today. The
Speaker 1: fact that someone built a mechanical device over two d
Speaker 1: and fifty years ago that could play chess and beat humans, well,
Speaker 1: it sounds like something out of a Jewels Verne novel,
Speaker 1: and yet it happened, well sort of. You see, there
Speaker 1: are enough drawings and firsthand accounts of how the device
Speaker 1: operated to hint at the true power of the robot.
Speaker 1: Thanks to magnets in the base of each chess piece
Speaker 1: and corresponding metal balls in the inside surface of the
Speaker 1: chess board, it was possible for a person to watch
Speaker 1: the game unfold and then operate the robot like a
Speaker 1: puppet as the game moved along. Sadly, the Turk was
Speaker 1: destroyed in a museum fire in July of eighteen fifty four.
Speaker 1: It and that happened the physical proof of its trickery
Speaker 1: literally went up in smoke. Still, it's hard not to
Speaker 1: see our modern world reflected in that eighteenth century invention.
Speaker 1: In the pursuit of progress and entertainment, we still try
Speaker 1: our best to cram as much power as possible into
Speaker 1: our devices. At least we've stopped using live humans to
Speaker 1: do it. I hope you've enjoyed today's guided tour of
Speaker 1: the Cabinet of Curiosities, subscribe for free on Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or learn more about the show by visiting Curiosities podcast
Speaker 1: dot com. The show was created by me Aaron Manky
Speaker 1: in partnership with how Stuff Works. I make another award
Speaker 1: winning show called Lore, which is a podcast, book series,
Speaker 1: and television show, and you can learn all about it
Speaker 1: over at the World of Lore dot com. And until
Speaker 1: next time, stay curious.