The Mechanical Turk

During the 18th century, as the industrial revolution picks up.... steam, people are dazzled by expertly constructed mechanical marvels: automatons. But Wolfgang von Kempelen brings something to the royal court in Vienna that people have never seen before: an automaton capable of playing chess.

SOURCES:
The Mechanical Turk by Tom Standage
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/debunking-mechanical-turk-helped-set-edgar-allan-poe-path-mystery-writing-180964059/
Maelzel’s Chess Player by Edgar Allan Poe 
Last of a Veteran Chess Player by Silas Weir Mitchell

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Hoax, a production of iHeart podcasts.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
Folks, it's a hug.

Speaker 1 (00:09):
No, I haven't seen when us to see the Welcome
to Hoax, a podcast about the lies we wish were true.

Speaker 2 (00:23):
And truths that sound like lies. I'm the ghost of
Danish Wartz, and I'm the evil twin of Lizzie Logan.
Welcome to the show, Lizzie. Are you a chess player? No? I,
at the very beginning of this year learned the basic
rules of how each of the pieces moved. I mean,
that's step one, and that is the entirety of my

(00:46):
chess career.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
I like playing chess, and I like the aesthetics of chess.
I like studying chess like I love doing like tutorials
and puzzles online. But I'm not good at chess at
all because I'm too impatient. I just like moving the pieces.

Speaker 2 (01:01):
I like the word chess. Yeah, and I am a
huge Abba fan, and therefore I have some affection for
the musical Chess.

Speaker 1 (01:11):
Should we go to New Should we plan a hoax
trip to New York to see a loosely associated, very
tangential production of Chess.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Sure?

Speaker 1 (01:20):
All of this is to say this episode involves chess, yes,
but it does not require any knowledge of how the
game works except that it is, you know, a game
of wits.

Speaker 2 (01:31):
Well, yeah, I mean I feel like it's like, if
you don't know what chess is, it's really it's a
board game and it's really hard, and it's really old,
and it's black pieces and white pieces. But I think
we can assume that all the listeners know what chess is. Well,
here's another question.

Speaker 1 (01:47):
Do you does it mean anything if I say mechanical
turk to you?

Speaker 2 (01:51):
Okay, So here's here's the thing, Dana, Yeah, I know
this one. Yeah, and I know what it actually was.

Speaker 1 (01:58):
Well, what do you think it was? Or what do
you think it is?

Speaker 2 (02:02):
The hoax? I mean, could like all of it?

Speaker 3 (02:05):
Yeah, I don't think you're going to get it right, Okay,
because I watched, like, I watched a YouTube video about
cheating scandals in chess, okay, and they covered this one
and they said that it was and we can edit
this out if I'm about to ruin the episode.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
It's a lot more convoluted, I think than you're gonna get.

Speaker 2 (02:26):
Okay. Well, yeah, okay, obviously, because you said this was
a long episode, but what what the YouTuber Sarah z
Ed said was that it was chess masters crouched underneath
just playing chess against whoever was playing chess against the
like quote unquote automaton and moving the like above ground

(02:48):
pieces with magnets, like just playing chess by candlelight.

Speaker 1 (02:52):
So that's like seventy percent right, Okay, because spoiler alert,
this is a hoax. Yes, I'm gonna We're gonna get
off the you know, get off the bat and say
this is a podcast called hoax.

Speaker 4 (03:02):
This is a hoax.

Speaker 1 (03:03):
Yes, but we're going to get into deeper and I
think actually pretty philosophical questions about and if a robot
can play chess.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
So at a tart.

Speaker 1 (03:14):
This is an episode about a man named Wolfgang von Kempelin.
Some people falsely say that he's a baron.

Speaker 2 (03:22):
He's not.

Speaker 1 (03:22):
He's related to a baron, but like if you ever
see that, you're like, this person doesn't know what they're
talking about. And he created an automaton that he claimed
could play chess.

Speaker 2 (03:33):
And he well, he also claimed it was an automaton. Yeah,
he created like a puppet. Basically, we're going to get in.
I'm getting ahead of you, Okay, I'll just let you.
I'll let you be the co host of this podcast.

Speaker 1 (03:47):
So let me place you now in the seventeen hundreds. Okay,
Industrial Revolution. Everything ell is terrible. Yeah, everyone smells horrible.
No one's taking enough baths, breath everywhere, no deodorant, The
dusteral revolution is happening, and people are getting excited by automatons. Basically,
I mean quite literally, Like when I say automaton, what

(04:08):
you're picturing like a jerky machine that's sometimes humanoid like
doing things like that is correct, this kind of I
could get into so much more detail, but because we
have to focus this episode. It's sort of like a
an evolution from medieval clocks.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
If you picture like.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
A medieval clock tower, eventually like figurines came out.

Speaker 2 (04:31):
Yeah, like a cuckoo clock.

Speaker 1 (04:32):
Okay, yeah, so like basically what happened I'm like racing
through this in the Western world. Eventually what happened was
clockmakers began making smaller and smaller automata for like clocks
for rich people that it's like it hits twelve and
like a little person comes out and does something. And
then eventually these clockmakers built just like autonom automata for

(04:54):
rich people to like entertain themselves, okay, and they kind
of became like sometimes they were like mechanical pictures with
moving parts, or like mechanical like things for your table,
like that could pour tea on their own.

Speaker 2 (05:09):
Yeah, like in the opening of Wallace and Gromitt where
he can like put his pants on.

Speaker 1 (05:14):
Yeah, like that, but much smaller, and for rich people
to like put in their cabinets of curiosities. O.

Speaker 4 (05:19):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (05:19):
And most of these end up in the collection of
kings and queens and emperors, which is which encourages engineers
to do this sort of thing, because if you were
like an engineer who wants to like win favor of
a king or queen, you like make them a fun
little gift.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
I like sucks that we don't do this anymore, Like
I'm sure someone is. I'm just like, why hasn't anyone
ever gotten in one of these?

Speaker 1 (05:43):
Well, so, the kind of father of the biomechanical automaton
like automatons that were meant to like look like people
is a guy named Jacques de Vaczon who makes three
kind of very famous automaton in seventeen thirty eight, one
that can play a flute, yeah, like fake lungs. So okay,
he's blowing and it is playing the flute, so I

(06:03):
guess we.

Speaker 2 (06:04):
Do still have them. They're just sex dolls. Okay. Sorry
you said blowing and I was like, yeah, yeah, blowing.
Point Okay. He can make one that has like do
you have to pump it or does it have like
a little battery.

Speaker 1 (06:15):
Basically most of them work the way grandfather clocks work
with weight you act like, I know you have grandfather clops,
but like weighted okay, and you have to wind it up.

Speaker 2 (06:23):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (06:24):
He also makes a boy with a pipe and a
drum so like playing music okay. And then he makes
what he thinks is his ps their resistance, this duck
that can simulate digestion, like you feed it bread crumbs
and then it would excrete. I'm gonna say, like like
breadcrumb poop.

Speaker 2 (06:42):
Okay, I mean that would be like interesting, and.

Speaker 1 (06:45):
Like imagine if you see like a mechanical duck that
you can actually feed bread crumbs and then like it
poops out like green pell watery.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (06:53):
The thing I want to note here is it didn't
it wasn't actually real. He was claiming that it was
like digesting and I'm putting that in air quote digesting
the pellets, but really it just happened.

Speaker 2 (07:05):
There was two other it was it's like how baby
dolls work, where it's you feed it baby food and
some and then like you like change the diaper. But
really it's that like you're putting one thing in, you're
putting in substance A, and then substance B is coming in. Exactly.

Speaker 1 (07:19):
There was a pre set chamber with like green food diet,
not food die, but like green dyed pellets. Yeah, came
out as the poop. So it's interesting and it's cool,
but actually, you know, we'll dismember the prestige. The prestige
is happening. Although very interestingly, this man did kind of
invent the first flexible rubber tube in order to build

(07:42):
the like quote unquote intestines. So actually good scientific and
important things are being developed in service of these I
don't know, like toy toys, yeah, entertainments.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
Okay, okay, go off tube tube guy.

Speaker 1 (07:58):
But he sort of causes this, sir of public interest
in automata. If you're an engineer, it's kind of like
a fun challenge, especially if you're trying to at this
point understand how humans work, like we're they're still understanding
like biology, and so they're kind of scientists scientists, I'm
using you loosely, but like these engineers are kind of

(08:18):
using automata to explore what they can figure out about
how humans work. Like the guy, this guy making a
flute playing automaton was interested in like lung pressure.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
Yeah, no, totally. I mean if you can, cause eventually
we're gonna get like someone's going to make a pacemaker.
So yeah, you know, it's all progress.

Speaker 1 (08:42):
But like that actually is the thesis of the episode,
that like people are doing weird, little interesting things and
it is progress, you know.

Speaker 2 (08:48):
What, Like some a lot of things are made by
people like fucking around.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
Yeah, but correct and keep that in mind. Okay, we're
going to focus on this guy named Wolfgang von Kempelein.
He was born in seventy thirty four and he's a
bureaucrat in the court of Maria Theresa of Austria. And
if that name kind of sounds familiar, it's because she's
Marie Antoinette's mom. Yes, So Wolfgang is this sort of

(09:13):
notably handsome man. He speaks several languages. He's charming. He's
sort of this like rising star in the bureaucracy. He
has this translation job translating the Hungarian civil Code from
Latin to German, which is now the new official language
of the Austro Hungarian Empire, and he does it in
just a few days, which astonishes people, and everyone's so

(09:36):
impressed by him. And he gets a job as a
counselor to the Imperial court. He loves tinkering, and now
that he's sort of a successful bureaucrat, he has enough
money to kind of afford his science hobby. He gets
sort of jobs with the government as a comptroller of
salt mines in Transylvania and comes up with a system
of pumps to drain the minds when they flood, which

(09:58):
seems very valuable. He designed waterworks for a castle in Presburg,
which is the capital of Hungary now Bratislava. He is
coordinating the settlement of this mountainous region in Hungary called Banat,
which is like designing the houses and like planning the villages,
like literally planning the settlement. And I do want to

(10:19):
point out in this book that I read about this
whole subject called the mechanical Turk by Tom Standage. There
is the best sentence just out of context. And I
want to stress this sentence has no more context on
either the front or back. We never find out anything more.
There's no footnote. I could not find anything else about this.

Speaker 2 (10:42):
Tom, get in touch with the podcast and let us
know more about this sentence.

Speaker 1 (10:46):
So while he's, you know, coordinating this settlement, we get
this sentence. Quote. While in Banat, he solved a local mystery,
freeing several wrongly imprisoned men from jail.

Speaker 2 (11:00):
Hey, great, vague, vague great. I would like to know
what they were in prison for.

Speaker 1 (11:07):
I would love to know what the local mystery is. Tom,
if you're listening, please let me know if anyone knows
any information on the local mystery he solved. That sounds
like a mini series, a Hulu TV show.

Speaker 2 (11:19):
I would watch.

Speaker 4 (11:19):
This guy.

Speaker 2 (11:20):
Sounds like like a local folk hero of just like
he just he just wanders through town like tinkering the
way and fixing up little things and Sullivan mysteries.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
And bringing innocent men from prison.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
Or yeah, like a like like he should be the
star of a CBS procedural.

Speaker 1 (11:41):
Yeah, yeah, the Automaton maker.

Speaker 2 (11:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (11:44):
So now fast forward It's seventeen sixty nine and Marie
Race of Austria invites Kemperln to her palace in Vienna
to see a performance by this famous French illusionist, Francois Pelletier.
And she invite Kemperland because in addition to just like
being a wandering good Samaritan, he's known as kind of

(12:07):
a good explainer of popular science. He's kind of like
the Carl Sagan of his day, or like he would
be a great podcaster.

Speaker 2 (12:14):
Is he almost like sort of like a MythBuster?

Speaker 4 (12:17):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (12:18):
Yeah, she literally brings him because he's like conversational, and
she wants to know how these tricks are going.

Speaker 4 (12:23):
To be done.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
Okay, and these quote unquote like magic tricks are going
to be based in science, because at this point, if
you're like a magician or illusionist, you're really gonna want
to stress that you're working with quote white magic as
opposed to black magic.

Speaker 2 (12:37):
Right, You're like, I'm doing an illusion. It's magical from science,
not from I'm into the devil. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (12:45):
So we don't know exactly what magic tricks Pelletaier performs.
We know that they're quote magnetic games. Kemperland is not impressed,
He publicly in front of the entire court says I
will return within a year with an invention far better
than anything this French guy has, and Maria Teresa actually

(13:07):
excuses him from his job for six months to go
do it and to go build an automaton more impressive
than anything this guy's showing you, which like great way
to get a sabbatical.

Speaker 2 (13:17):
That is such a good like Babe Ruth calling a shot,
Kennedy being like we're going to go to the moon,
We're going to go to the moon. I'm making you
an automaton, Queen Marie.

Speaker 1 (13:27):
And it really is like a matter of national pride
at this point, Yeah, to like show like, well Austrians
can do this better than French people.

Speaker 2 (13:33):
Yes, So six months.

Speaker 1 (13:35):
Later he comes back to the Palace in seventeen seventy
with this automaton.

Speaker 2 (13:41):
And it's also a classic recipe for someone's gonna lie,
you know what I mean, because you've now set yourself
a high bar that it's going to be so embarrassing
if you don't clear it, that you've left yourself no
wiggle room that if you can't clear it, you're gonna lie.

Speaker 1 (13:58):
Well, I want to actually be a little like in
defense of the hoax. This was in response to a
magic act.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
Okay, right, So he saw this.

Speaker 1 (14:08):
Impressive magic act and he's like, I can explain how
you're doing all of this.

Speaker 2 (14:12):
I'm not impressed.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
He comes back, he says, I'm gonna come back with
something more impressive, and I will say, inarguably he does.

Speaker 2 (14:21):
Okay, he comes back with a with a better hoax. Yeah,
so he comes back. I'm going to describe this to you.
It's a humanoid figure wearing a turban with a black beard,
wearing Ottoman robes. So it's he's known as the Mechanical Turk.
And it's not only because it was like considered exotic,
like Turkish people. At this point in Vienna, people were

(14:44):
drinking Turkish coffee and having servants wear Turkish costumes.

Speaker 1 (14:47):
It was very stylish. But also chess was popularized in
Persia and had spread throughout the Muslim world, so there's
also this sort of like chess association. Interesting with the
Ottoman dress that the quote unquote mechanical Turk is wearing.
So it's a humanoid figure sitting at this cabinet that's
four feet long, two and a half feet deep and

(15:10):
three feet high, and it's on brass casters so it
can move and swivel around. The front of the cabinet
has three doors and a large drawer underneath. So I'm
showing Lizzie a picture.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
It kind of looks like we'll put it on Instagram,
but it's one drawer that pulls out.

Speaker 4 (15:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:26):
The left arm holds when it's not playing, holds a
long smoking pipe. The right arm is at the on
the top of the cabinet and it will use its
left arm to play chess, so that the smoking pipe
is just decorative.

Speaker 2 (15:39):
So and the right arm is decorative. Is decorative.

Speaker 1 (15:41):
Ok, it's not going to be used. So he wheels
in this automaton and announces to the court that he
made an automaton that can play chess. Now, up until
this point, automaton technology had come pretty far. Automaton could
play musical instruments and play multiple musical like play multiple

(16:03):
songs on musical instruments, like there were I'm going to
use the word robots, but like robots that could play
the flute and like play different songs based on how
you again like quote unquote programmed, but like basically using
music box technology, like you know, so like people don't
know exactly everything automatons can do because we're still figuring

(16:25):
it out. So people are I think, probably, if not
immediately skeptical, then like curious because maybe they're automaton can't
play chess.

Speaker 2 (16:36):
And also like what does play chess mean? You know
what I mean? Like to play chess and to be
good at chess are two very different things. Like I
can imagine someone maybe not at this time, but like
if you told me that someone with some sort of
rudimentary programming device made a little machine that could move

(16:58):
all of the pieces in the way that the different
pieces move, I would be like, yeah, that's not that
many different functions. There's what like ten different pieces in
chess that like that, that's not that many different functions.
That's different from knowing. That's different from being able to
understand and process how the other person has moved their
pieces and then what the rules are for you know

(17:20):
what I mean, likes keep them all in mind. That's
different Like I could like move upon and move a
night and move a castle and that that counts as
playing chess, but like understanding how many moves away from
checkmate I am like playing a full game of chess

(17:40):
is different, so like to play chess, like, you know,
let's get real philosophical, we will get philosophical.

Speaker 1 (17:48):
So basically he wheels in this automaton. I think most
people are thinking exactly what Lizzie positive at the beginning
of this episode, that like, well, there's a big old cabinet,
a guy's just tucked inside there, right.

Speaker 2 (18:01):
Yeah, and again I posited that based on a YouTube. Okay,
so I cited my sources and I did that's like
based on me being a scholar.

Speaker 1 (18:14):
Based on YouTube. So part of the presentation of the
Mechanical Turk is kind of a performance. So how the
performance begins is compelling. Comes over to the cabinet and
at first he just unlocks the left hand side and
he shows the left hand cabinet opens and there's like
clockwork machinery inside and sort of like the circular cylinder

(18:38):
that was used in like music playing automaton at the time,
So like the machinery would kind of look familiar to
some people clockwork machinery. And he would walk around the
back of the machine and hold open another little door
and hold a candle up in the back to show
like nothing behind there. Then he would close that, open
up the big bottom drawer and show inside there's a

(19:02):
you know, chess pieces that he would pull out, and
there was a pillow that then went under the automaton's elbow.
And then you're probably thinking like, oh, well, then the
person's probably hiding in the other big container. Well that's
when you know the show continues asked and answered. Then
he would open the big section, the last like two

(19:22):
thirds right section of the cabinet and show that it
was mostly empty if you thought a person was in there.
It's like mostly lined with dark cloth. There's some like
general mechanics, there's a red cushion, and there's a wooden
box that then he like pulls out so and he
would also spin the whole thing around to be like

(19:43):
see nothing to see here. He lifts up the figure's
robe from behind to show like there's machinery behind it,
spin it around on its casters, and then put everything
back in place and say, everyone got a good look,
let's go.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
I mean, this is like literally what magicians do before
they saw a lady in half. This is the exact same,
the exact same thing of like there's nothing in the box,
like this is a there's an exact way you do this.
It's a magic trick.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
What part of the process is now is he takes
out a candelabra, puts it on top, lights it. He's
holding this wooden box that he'll occasionally just kind of
like look in, so you're like, what's going on with
that box? And he invites someone to play chess with it.
A count Count Kobunzel will be the first opponent. And
what kind of happened is you move your piece. He

(20:30):
will ask you to try to move your piece exactly
to the center of each square to make it easier
for the automaton, because it will move its left hand
and like use its hand like kind of like a
claw machine to like pick up the pieces.

Speaker 2 (20:43):
And move them.

Speaker 1 (20:44):
And it will it will play a game of chess
using its like mechanical arm, and if you moved the
incorrect piece, it would shake its head and then move
your piece back to where it was supposed to be.
It the machine would nod twice if it checked to
your if it threatened your queen, and then three times
if it checked your king. Eventually, later in the life

(21:05):
of this machine, it will actually say check and then
eventually check in French. And it could also roll ittize,
which is very funny. That is my favorite detail. As
I mentioned before, Kemberland would like move around during this
performance every few moves and not at regular intervals. He
would like come and rewind it up. He would like

(21:27):
look in this box he was holding sometimes and he
would just like walk around the room. He would let
observers take big magnets nearby to show like, not you
can disturb this with magnets. That's not how I'm doing this,
and let it. Let it play chess. In addition to
actually playing full games of chess, it could do this
thing called the Night's Tour, which is like a chess

(21:49):
puzzle trick where you can put a knight on any
piece of the board and the goal is to try
to get it to touch every piece, every square of
the board only once.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
Oh interesting, So it's like a math puzzle. Yeah, and
it could do that. That's the type of thing that
I would have been like as a kid. You could
have kept me occupied for a couple of hours trying
to do that. And it's also like as a computer game,
and it's also.

Speaker 1 (22:17):
The kind of thing that like you're like, I could
see an automaton being able to do this.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
Well, once somebody figured it out, you could just program
an automaton to do that series of moves, like it
wouldn't have to think, it would just do the same
one every time. Yeah, but actually if you picked a
different disquence, okay, okay, okay, yeah, it's like the audience
could pick.

Speaker 1 (22:34):
So during this first performance, he also does something. He
lets the automaton do something that like pretty quickly he'll
remove from the performance, which is letting it like speak
using a letter board, like a wheezy board like cast
get questions and it would answer, but like pretty quickly,
he's like gilding the lily. This is just a chess
playing robot. So that gets retired pretty quick.

Speaker 2 (22:55):
Because if it can talk, then it's just like a oh,
you've invented like a whole person. Yeah you're like you're.

Speaker 1 (23:01):
Actually again like this podcast is called hoax. This is
a hoax. I think Templeon realized, Like okay, if I'm
also positive that it can answer questions like let's just.

Speaker 2 (23:10):
Think what you know what I mean, like where is
where does this end?

Speaker 1 (23:15):
It's a chess robot, So the so unsurprisingly is a
massive success. People cannot figure out how he did it.
People think he actually he invented a chess playing robot.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
Well, because this is so smart, because it's not just
a magic trick. It's also like can you beat this
robot in chess? And there's a competition element.

Speaker 1 (23:33):
And it's not just can you solve that this isn't true.
There's also we're at the exact stage of history where
you're like, maybe you can make a robot that plays chess.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
And also just are you good enough to beat the robot?
Like yeah, there's two Like for smart people, there's like
three different games to play, Like one of them's chess,
the other is like how does this work? And then
the other one is like does this work? Does this?
Is this real?

Speaker 4 (23:57):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (23:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:58):
So it becomes a massive success. The Empress loves it,
makes Kempellon do a bunch of appearances, and it becomes
the talk of basically Europe because people at court write
letters describing it.

Speaker 2 (24:10):
And you don't even need to. Another reason to not
have it talk is that it doesn't need to speak
a language.

Speaker 1 (24:14):
Everybody speaks speaks chess, and people are like arguing in
public letters to newspapers about whether it's even possible to
have a machine play chess. One guy writes that, like,
obviously there's a guy in the cabinet, and then another
guy writes back, that's like, no, I saw it inside
the cabinet. It is not big enough for even a
small child or a monkey. And that's important because there

(24:36):
was a report at this time that the Sultan of
Baghdad had a chess playing monkey. So you're like, maybe
I have a tiny monkey inside, but it just does
not seem physically possible to have a person in there.
Publication of these letters goes to you know, French newspapers.
The Empress brings Kempelland back from his posting in Bana,
where presumably he was solving other local mysteries, and she

(24:58):
gives him an additional allow no one's basically doubling his
salary and like gives him a bunch of engineering tasks
like he mission accomplished. Okay, now he's at court, like
making hydraulic systems, like elaborate mechanical beds, Like he wants
to be someone who's like doing science, and like she's like,
you nailed this automaton entertainment. Here's double your salary dream job.

Speaker 2 (25:22):
Can you imagine being the French magician who did such
a lackluster trick that in response, this guy like changed Europe.

Speaker 1 (25:34):
Truly and like publicly, like I did this because this
guy's magic fucking sucks. Yes, Kemperlan tries to distance himself
from the Turk at this point, like it did its
job and it was a stepping stone for him to
do more science work. And he now he's doing work
that he's like more excited by. He's trying to work
on a typewriter that blind people can use, and he's
very interested in a machine that can imitate the human voice.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
He's just like he's like trying to help the deaf
in the Yeah, it's kind of like he.

Speaker 1 (26:03):
Used this to get his name out there and now
he's doing the things.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
It's like a parent.

Speaker 1 (26:07):
Imagine someone making a parody Twitter account in college that
they're like, great, I got my name out there, and now.

Speaker 2 (26:13):
I'm gonna do like more work. I'm proud of that
sort of thing that would never happen. Imagine that the
heyday of twenty fourteen.

Speaker 1 (26:21):
So there's this gap of several years where the mechanical
Church just doesn't play in seventeen seventy four, there's the
Scottish nobleman named Sir Robert Murray who basically insists on
playing and he writes these letters and Kempelland's like it's broken,
it needs to be maintained, and he's like, no, no,
I insist. He writes that he and like fifteen other
scotsmen come to the scientist's house to play, and then

(26:45):
he comments, he writes that, like quote, the automaton had
been dismounted for some years because I suppose it took
up too much of the gentleman's time. So again Kimpellan
is like, I'm a civil servant, I'm an engineer'roud of
the fact that I made this thing and no one
has correctly guessed how it works. But this isn't like

(27:06):
what my what, I'm my main interest. Yeah okay yeah.
But then Maria Teresa dies and the new emperor is
her son, Joseph the Second, and it's a little tricky
when you're a civil servant who's like had been given
a big bonus by like a patron who liked you,
and now she's not in power anymore, so you know,

(27:28):
he wants to make Joseph the Second. Happy Joseph the
Second has this visit coming up from Grand Duke Paul
of Russia, who's the son of Catherine the Great. They
need entertainment. They want to like show off how smart
Austria is, and so they're like, hey, wasn't there that
like mechanical chess playing Turk?

Speaker 2 (27:47):
Like why don't we get that?

Speaker 1 (27:48):
Everybody liked it like that, So he resurrects the mechanical Turk.

Speaker 2 (27:54):
You know what it is. It's like if you're really
known for like being pee wee, you're like, I'm going
to do other acting roles and it's like you can.
That's not what people want to see, but like you can.
We want you to play the hits.

Speaker 1 (28:07):
Yeah, so the new and then when the new Emperor
tells you to play the hits, you play that.

Speaker 4 (28:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (28:13):
So he comes back with the Chess Player and it
is a still a huge and it's so success every
nostalgia like yeah.

Speaker 5 (28:22):
The Turk, yeah, I remember, and I still can't figure
out how it works.

Speaker 1 (28:26):
And it's such a big hit that Joseph the Second
insists on a two year European tour. He's like, you
are no more bureaucratic due it's a mandatory sabbatical. And
again it's like he has to do it because it's
the emperor.

Speaker 2 (28:41):
It's like a Dina Menzel. You're singing let it Go.
I don't care if you can hit the notes. You
are we were trying. You are singing let it go.

Speaker 1 (28:49):
Yeah, it's almost as if the automaton has a life
of its own, so he wants it to tour around Europe.
Paris is the logical first step because it's sort of
the chess capital of Europe. The trip begins in April

(29:10):
of seventeen.

Speaker 2 (29:10):
They ever go to Turkey. No, No, that's so rude.

Speaker 1 (29:14):
Yeah, it stops at Versailles and it's so popular there
they stay longer than expected, and they go to Paris,
where it's on display. Spectators are charged like a small
admission fee. It will lose a game occasionally. It loses
to this man named mister Bernard, and he is a
second rank player, which sounds bad. Your second rank, Well.

Speaker 2 (29:38):
I mean, but out of how many ranks, well.

Speaker 1 (29:41):
I was, there were only five second rank players and
only two first rank players.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
Yeah, it's like like tennis, where like to even get
a rank you have to be like real gu yeah exactly.

Speaker 1 (29:51):
So throughout the Mechanical Tricks life, it will lose a
handful of games, but it will win so many more. Okay,
so it's like, you know, keeps when it loses, it's notable.

Speaker 2 (30:05):
Okay, So that's like bragging rights. It's like I beat
that robot. Yeah exactly. Like I know, we know the
name of this guy, like a lawyer. We know who
he is. Oh, good job.

Speaker 1 (30:15):
It keeps going throughout the summer. People are writing letters
about it. It stays at the Cafe de la Regions,
which is like the chess cafe where people played.

Speaker 2 (30:25):
Oh I thought you meant that, like it stayed there
as a hotel And I was like, you mean the
guy who made it stayed there. I was like, did
get its own room?

Speaker 1 (30:34):
Like no, it got its own box? Yeah, but no,
it's like this is like the cafe stood up there.

Speaker 2 (30:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:42):
And so there's a legendary player named Leagal who's one
of the first ranked players, and it loses to him.
But everyone really wanted to play this legendary player named Philidor.
That's like the the match of the century. Everyone wants to.

Speaker 2 (30:57):
See yon Yeah okay, yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
I was gonna say ten Jennings versus Watson.

Speaker 2 (31:03):
Whatever. Didn't Watson play chess? Yeah?

Speaker 1 (31:06):
I think, okay, no, no, Well we'll get to that
a little.

Speaker 2 (31:08):
I want to see the automaton play Watson.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
It's the deep thought playing casparovn chess.

Speaker 2 (31:14):
We'll get there, okay.

Speaker 1 (31:17):
So Philidor is this amazing French player. He took on
three opponents at once while blindfolded, which seems insane.

Speaker 2 (31:25):
I think, once you're that good at chess, like being
able to see the board kind of doesn't matter, so
I think they like to do it blindfolded just to
be like.

Speaker 1 (31:33):
Tee he Well, he won. It was two wins in
one draw in case you're curious, and Philadora for him,
plays the Turk. Philidor does win, Yeah, but he later
says it was a really hard time. And he says
that it was pretty terrifying.

Speaker 2 (31:48):
And I'm not sure if it.

Speaker 1 (31:49):
Was because it was hard playing chess or it's just
kind of like weird and scary to look at. Like
maybe he thought it was terrifying just because it was
like scary.

Speaker 2 (31:56):
Well, I feel like both, like if you were I mean,
at this point, these people, chess is their full time job, right,
So like, if you are just used to going human
a human like kind of playing anything except a human
would probably be really scary, and then playing something that
looks like a human but isn't, it's probably like so

(32:17):
freaking yeah, where you're just like hey, man, like, hey,
freaky robo wooden, dude, keep moving your pieces around.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
Well, Philidor isn't the only celebrity in Paris around this time.

Speaker 2 (32:34):
Who else is famous in Paris at this time?

Speaker 1 (32:36):
Dana A little man named Benjamin Franklin. Oh, I've heard
of him, heard of him. He was the signatory at
the Treaty of Paris at the end of the American
Revolutionary War, so he's still representing the US in France
at this time. Templand is a huge Ben Franklin fan.

Speaker 2 (32:54):
That makes sense because they both like to make so
he's like a fanboy science.

Speaker 1 (32:59):
Yeah, And he right to Benjamin Franklin to be like, hey,
fandom fan, like, can I meet with you? And so
Ben Franklin happens to also be a chess fanatic. Kemberland
invites Franklin to his rooms to demonstrate the chess player,
to like show him the progress he's making on his
like speaking machine because like he's fan boying out he

(33:19):
gets to use his chess player, like he's like, okay,
I have to be on this tour of Europe. I
wish I wasn't, but at least I can like meet
my idols. And Benjamin Franklin plays the automaton and he loses.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
Yeah, I mean, Benjamin Franklin was good at so many things.
It's okay if he's bad at one thing, and that
thing is chess.

Speaker 1 (33:37):
And he probably wasn't even bad this the chess player
is just like really good.

Speaker 2 (33:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (33:41):
So then it goes to London in the autumn of
seventeen eighty three, goes on display five shillings. At the
same time, there's this sort of promotional book that's published
by a man named Carl Gottlieb von Windisch, who's a
friend of Kemberland. So we know it's like it's like
an authorized biography. It's basically a book and leaves out
all of cancellable things that Turks sometimes he said slurs

(34:04):
when he was drunk and yeah, you know, grabbed women's
books with his hand with his robotic well, with the
they say that hand is decorative but that's his that's
his butt grabbing hand. Well, so this book is like
written in the form of letters to an anonymous friend,
like telling the backstory of the automaton and Campellen and
like what it does. So again, these letters aren't real.

(34:27):
It's like an ad camp, an epistolary ad campaign. British
newspapers are writing articles about people being gullible. This is
also one of those things where I think, with historical
hopeses were tempted to be like, oh, people were so dumb.
At the time, people thought that like robots could play chess.
A yes, some people did, because this.

Speaker 2 (34:48):
Isn't one of the ones where I think people were dumb.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
Well, first I want to say people did not know
what automatons were capable of, and actually robots can play chess.
Now people figured out robots can't play chess, so I'm
just going to say that. But even at the time,
people were like, I know it's a magic trick, but
I don't know how it works. Yes, so most pretty
much everyone kind of was just like, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (35:12):
How it works.

Speaker 1 (35:14):
The newspapers also at this point are referencing the fact
that the machine had beaten mister Philidor in Paris, which
is how rumors get started because he didn't oh see.

Speaker 2 (35:24):
And sometimes newspaper writers get things right. Sometimes the newspaper
writers get things wrong. It's also so interesting that it's
like the fact that they're making it play chess. It's like,
somehow somewhere someone smart is involved in this. Yeah you
know what I mean. It's like, okay, even if you're
a snotty snot and you're looking at this and you're going, Okay,

(35:45):
I don't know how this works, but I know that
everyone falling for it is freaking stupid because there's I
haven't figured it out yet, but like there's got to
be really easy explanation because automatons can't play chess. And
it's like, well, somewhere someone involved in this mechanical turk
project is freaking smart because they're good at chess. And

(36:08):
if I know one thing, it's the chess is the
smart people game. Yeah, you're good at.

Speaker 1 (36:13):
Chess, shorthand for being smart.

Speaker 2 (36:15):
Which I actually don't think is necessarily true, but that's
like the cultural understanding.

Speaker 1 (36:20):
So in England, there's this guy named Philip Thickness who
writes an entire book called The Speaking Figure and the
Automaton Chess Player basically with his explanation for the hoax
and his explanation, well, first, he starts off by saying,
it's impossible for machine to play chess. Okay, so we
know it's impossible for machine to play chess.

Speaker 2 (36:37):
Ergo is a hoax. I'm gonna figure out how it works.

Speaker 1 (36:41):
And his theory is that there is a child quote
of ten, twelve or fourteen in the machine concealed inside
the wooden base, using a mirror to look back at
the reflected image of the game and move the arm.
He is pointing out that like usually you can only
see the turk between one and two pm, like the
display hours, because a kid inside wouldn't want a longer confinement,

(37:04):
and if it's just a robot, like why wouldn't you
want it to.

Speaker 2 (37:06):
Work more hours?

Speaker 1 (37:07):
And he also says like there could be room for
the child to like go up into the turk automaton,
Like there's not really room in the cabinet, but it
could like kind of go into the figure and then
see through. Also, you know other theories see through sort
of its robes, like its closer like semi transparent so
there are theories. I will say there are some people

(37:29):
who see it who are like, I don't know if
this is real or not, but like I feel very
inspired by like what the technology could be capable of.
This man Edmund Kurtwright sees the Turk is so inspired
that he's like, we could make an automated loom. Yeah,
He's like, if a machine can play chess, a machine

(37:49):
can weave, and he makes an automatic loom. He patents
the power loom three years later, I mean, which like
really does a lot for the industrial over Let's go.
So it's like this fake technology, even the people who
believe it feel like machines are capable of more things
that then they actually are capable of.

Speaker 2 (38:10):
That's cool.

Speaker 1 (38:10):
Yeah, So Kemberlin spend's a year in London then carries
on around this time. While he's doing these sort of
public displays, he kind of starts another technique, which is
like a second chess board, which is the so like,
if I'm the figure playing chess, he'll set up like
a chessboard next to the machine that the player will

(38:31):
be at, so like the audience can see both people
facing out and they'll just be like a little string
in between, and he'll be the go between. So like
you'll move your piece and then he'll move the piece
on the turk chess board, and then the Turk will
move his piece, and then Campellen will move the piece
on your chess board.

Speaker 2 (38:48):
Does that make sense?

Speaker 4 (38:49):
No?

Speaker 2 (38:51):
Hold on?

Speaker 1 (38:51):
What would like imagine just a stage? I guess not stage,
more like a little room. But now there's two people
sitting next to each other side.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
So we're playing one game.

Speaker 1 (39:02):
We're playing one game. He's just being the go between
to like move the pieces on each store.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
The audience can see better. Yeah, so the audience can
see better.

Speaker 1 (39:10):
And also because the machine works better if this if
the pieces are exactly in the middle. Okay, so he
can like make sure the pieces go exactly in the middle.

Speaker 2 (39:20):
Of the squares.

Speaker 1 (39:21):
Okay, So like that kind of happens. There's this guy
around this time. It's like traveling through European cities. It
goes to Leipzig, goes to Dresden. Around Dresden, this man,
Josef von Recknitz, sees the Turk and becomes like a little.

Speaker 2 (39:36):
Obsessed with how it works.

Speaker 1 (39:38):
He's like, I'm going to figure it out, and he
builds like models, trying to figure it out, and in
seventeen eighty nine comes up with this like full book
with illustrations about how he thinks it works. So I'm
going to show you his little illustration. This is his
little illustration of how he thinks it works.

Speaker 2 (39:59):
There's a little man in a little box.

Speaker 1 (40:02):
It's like a little man in the box sitting sitting up,
and he basically says, the drawer that like bottom drawer
that pulls out doesn't go all the way to the back.

Speaker 2 (40:14):
Right, so you could like sit with basically your feet
in the drawer or like your bottom, like you could
like your butt behind.

Speaker 1 (40:20):
No, it would be even like behind the drawer, Like
the drawer is like a filtball drawer. So you're sitting
like kind of in the narrow space behind a where
drawer ends.

Speaker 2 (40:30):
And then you just sit there and you play the chess.

Speaker 1 (40:36):
And like move the arm. The problem with this, it's
like a good theory. The problem with it is his
model is not proportional.

Speaker 2 (40:45):
The man is just so small.

Speaker 1 (40:47):
The man is small. It does not actually work like
the way he drew it.

Speaker 2 (40:52):
Like the man would be like four feet tall.

Speaker 1 (40:54):
And it's it's not He is literally asking a man
to fit into a space five feet long, seven inches
high and eighteen inches wide, So like a person could
not fit in that small a space. Nope, So like
people are trying to figure it out, but no one
is getting the right answer yet. Compellen returns to Vienna

(41:14):
and like probably keeps the machine dormant. We don't know
for sure, but it's probably just like hanging out for
twenty years and he finally gets to put the Turk
behind him, working as a civil servant, an inventor. He
writes some plays, makes engravings, works on his speaking machine,
which is his big passion, and like friends kind of
know not to ask him.

Speaker 2 (41:34):
About the Turk.

Speaker 1 (41:37):
There are like a lot of rumors at this point
that like Compellen had this interaction with Frederick the Second
of Prussia who like insisted on knowing the secret and
then bought it to like know the secret, were like
that he played Catherine the Great, but like it didn't.
So if you ever see like an account of the
mechanical Turk playing Catherine the Great, you know someone.

Speaker 2 (41:57):
Is full of shit. Interesting. So Campellen dies age seventy
March twenty sixth, eighteen oh four, and his son sells
the mechanical turk to this man named Johann Matel, and
Matel is a Bavarian musician that is interested in music machines.
He's also very.

Speaker 1 (42:18):
Like a good builder and engineer. He made this instrument
I don't I guess you call it an instrument half
an instrument half an automaton called the pan Harmonicon that
makes the sound of an entire orchestra. And it's basically
just like a big box like six feet wide, six
feet deep that plays music the way a whole orchestra does.
And he's actually friends with Beethoven who composed this like

(42:41):
song Wellington's victory for it like great. He makes a
mechanical trumpet player that can be programmed to play many
different songs.

Speaker 2 (42:49):
Cool. He also made this like his sort of.

Speaker 1 (42:52):
Piece to player piano works. I don't know how player
piano works. He also makes this mechanical recreation of the
burning down of Moscow when Napoleon got there. So if
you're familiar with why would you want that? Well, if
you're familiar with the Woking Phoenix film Napoleon, I haven't
seen it well, or history When Napoleon got to Moscow

(43:14):
Russian people burned it down rather than let him take
the city.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
Oh so it's like it's like an anti Okay, I
a little bit get why you would want a mechanical recreation.

Speaker 1 (43:23):
It's like a fun if you're anti Napoleon, which like
the rest of Europe is, it's a fun anti Napoleon
little art piece.

Speaker 2 (43:31):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (43:32):
But this metal guy's also like a bit of a plagiarist.
Like I mentioned, he was friends with Beethoven. He got
him to write this piece for his mechanical orchestra, but
then they got in beef because he didn't put Beethoven's
name on the poster, because he's like, I bought the.

Speaker 2 (43:47):
Song from you. You can't do that, bro.

Speaker 1 (43:50):
Yeah, Beethoven was mad. And then also this one's like
a pretty egregious example. He invented a rudimentary metronome, and
then he was traveling around and goes to Amster and
like meets this inventor. He's like, hey, you're working on
a metronome. I came up with my own metronome and
it was like kind of the way you imagine a metronome.
And Mitchell's like, oh shit, that's better. Yeah, and he

(44:11):
immediately just bounced. He was like, well, first, can I
buy it? And the guy was like no, and he's
like okay, fine, and he leaves and goes to Paris
and just applies for a patent and pass it off
as his own and calls it Matel's metronome. And he will,
at various points in this story claim to have built
the chess player himself in slightly slightly in his defense,

(44:34):
it had been out of commission for twenty five years
so and he like made some modifulations.

Speaker 2 (44:38):
Finders keepers is not a thing.

Speaker 1 (44:40):
No, I'm saying, like he did like put it back together.
But also you know, since it hadn't really been played
in like a quarter of a century, like not a
lot of people like remember or no made it. So
he yeah, he's let's just he's like a he's a showman. Yeah,
dare I say the greatest showman.

Speaker 2 (44:56):
He's a Burnamish, a Burnamish figure. Take a shot if
we uh mentioned Pete Barnum on this pod. Yeah, true.

Speaker 1 (45:03):
This is it's while the mechanical Turk is under the
custodianship of Matel, that it will meet its most famous opponent.
It's gonna meet a little man by the name of
Napoleon Bonaparte.

Speaker 2 (45:15):
Okay, so yeah, so it turns out, you know, right,
we were pretty anti Napoleon, but then she's gonna march
on Europe and you're gonna want to make good with him. Uh.

Speaker 1 (45:24):
Mazel sets up the Turk in the apartments of one
of Napoleon's generals in eighteen oh nine, and so a
lot of this account, this is a very like famous account.
It comes from Napoleon's valet.

Speaker 2 (45:35):
Sorry jumping ahead. Does mates almost know how it works? Yeah?
Mason figures out how it works. He So the son
didn't tell him he figured it out either.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
The son told him. But if you have it in
front of you.

Speaker 2 (45:47):
You'll the secret is in the box. Yeah, you can
figure out it. Okay, Okay. So he's using the same
method that the original inventor used, Yes, exactly, know how.
So he's working it the way that it works, plus
some modification and going around Europe, going around Europe, going
to do its most famous game. And now he's going
to Napoleon. Most of this account we're taking the history

(46:11):
of this from Napoleon's valet, who went by Constant, who
published his memoirs in eighteen thirty. There are a lot
of other accounts of Napoleon with the Turk, because you know,
it's like kind of the most famous and romantic episode
in the Turk's history, So just like bear that in
mind that but a lot of them come from this
main account that I am going to take as the

(46:32):
most historically accurate because it's someone who is actually the
most primary source. Basically, Napoleon sits across from the Turk,
the Turk salutes, Napoleon makes a few moves, and then
like kind of trying to trick it, makes an intentionally
false move to test the automaton to be like, what
are you going to do if I me? And for
Napoleon like tries to cheat, and the automaton shakes his

(46:53):
head and puts the piece back where it's supposed to be,
and then Napoleon cheats again, and then a third time,
and then the Turk shakes his head and sweeps all
the pieces off the board, and he's like, that's it.
I love that, because why wouldn't a tom and Tom
be scared of Napoleon. He's not, He's already to give
a shit.

Speaker 1 (47:09):
Yeah, So another version of this story will say like
Matel had Napoleon sitting at the second chess board, and
then like we'll be like a Napoleon tried to cross
the roped off area and Matel stopped him. Another it's
better if they're facing each other, yeah, And like another
account will say that, like you know, when they were
at when he tried to put him at the second chessboard,

(47:30):
Napoleon said, ah, I will only fight him face to face.
And then like they played at the same chess board.
But it's like that's a good story, but like probably not,
it doesn't.

Speaker 2 (47:39):
It's really hard for me to picture Napoleon being like
at a different chess board, Like it's like so emasculating
to be at, like this is your chess board, and
this is your chess board.

Speaker 1 (47:50):
And then they also say like a you know, Napoleon
thought that the person inside the operator would be looking
out through the Turk's clothing, so he like tied a
shawl round his body. And again I think that like
because spoiler alert, it wasn't it's not a guy sitting
in there, so like if you did tie a shawl
around the body, it wouldn't wouldn't make a difference. So

(48:11):
I think sometimes these like later stories are like meant
to show like the trickery involved, but like that's there's
no actual historical record of that.

Speaker 4 (48:20):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
There's also later in like eighteen forty four, so again
this is like years later there'll be a London news
chess column that claims that they actually did play the
full game, which lasted nineteen moves, and they reproduce all
of the moves, but like they don't have any evidence
that those.

Speaker 2 (48:40):
Are the moves.

Speaker 1 (48:41):
Yeah, and it also doesn't really make sense because it
like has both of them playing very badly.

Speaker 2 (48:46):
Yeah, Okay, I feel like if somebody were there recording
the moves, like we would like that would be in
a museum.

Speaker 1 (48:54):
If someone had recorded the moves. It feels unlikely that
the first account of that would be a lunch did
in news column in eighteen forty four. But at a
certain point, napoleon stepson enters the chat. Okay, he is
mayor famously married to a woman named Josephine.

Speaker 2 (49:11):
I didn't know he had a step son.

Speaker 1 (49:12):
Josephine had kids from a first marriage, who's her husband
incidentally guillotine by Napoleon No, okay, by the French Revolution,
but not her, not.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
Her, because she was just a lady. In theory.

Speaker 1 (49:27):
She was like almost she was like in line to
be guillotine. The luckily the French Revolution like ran out
of Steene before that. History history is weird. The steps
On purchases the Turk sometime between eighteen oh nine and
eighteen twelve. He loved chess. He wants to know the secret.

Speaker 2 (49:44):
And he's like, this is that machine that annoyed my stepdad.
Did Napoleon get along with his steps On?

Speaker 1 (49:50):
Yeah, no they were.

Speaker 2 (49:50):
They were good friends.

Speaker 1 (49:52):
No, they not good friends. They heavily a lot of
mutrable respect. They were allies.

Speaker 2 (49:58):
This is such an interest question to asking an episode
about chess. Did Napoleon get along with the steps He did?
All right, fantastic? Okay, So he loves chess. He wants
to know the secret.

Speaker 1 (50:08):
Ye, matel says that he'll only tell you this, tell
you the secret if you buy it.

Speaker 2 (50:12):
Ye. Eugene offers to buy it.

Speaker 1 (50:15):
His name is Eugene, Eugen. I don't know how to
ta it in a French way.

Speaker 2 (50:20):
Okay. He offers to buy it.

Speaker 1 (50:22):
He pays thirty thousand francs for it, which is three
times what Mattel had paid, and so at this time,
you know, Eugene is off with Now he owns the
chess robot. Matel is busy working on a new panharmonicon
and the mechanical new you know, his fancy mechanical display
of the Conflagration of Moscow. Around this time, Napoleon is

(50:43):
defeated by Wellington. We're going to fast forward again to
eighteen fifteen, four years later.

Speaker 2 (50:49):
I'm just saying it all ties back, because where was
Napoleon defeated Waterlin Abbas breakout.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
Hit Abbas bright chess chess.

Speaker 2 (51:00):
It all comes back.

Speaker 1 (51:02):
So again I'm like fast forwarding through a lot of history.
But basically Eugene has this robot for four years. MATEL
comes back now that He's like, I have my pan Harmonicon,
I have my Conflagration of Moscow. I want my chess
player back for my little museum. He tries to buy
it back. Eugene is like, well, I'm not going to
sell it for less than thirty thousand francs, which is
what that makes sense. MATEL cannot afford that. There's a

(51:23):
few different accounts. Maytel is like bad with money, but
the likeliest sort of outcome here is that he like
kind of agrees to like a buy now, pay later,
like in tries to Klarna. Yeah, he Klarina is the
mechanical chest robot.

Speaker 2 (51:38):
I do understand the principle of don't sell something for
less than you paid for it. That makes sense to me.

Speaker 1 (51:44):
So Meltel goes back on tour. He goes to London.
He puts this mechanical turk on display with his trumpeter
and some other attractions. Crowds are really great by this point.
It's like a speaking robot. It'll say check and later
when it tours in France, they'll say, like a check
in French, and then they say that. From that point on,

(52:06):
he doesn't do He does mostly the same like little
show of like opening cabinets in the same order that Kempellendad,
except he won't like use the wooden.

Speaker 2 (52:17):
Cask that he was holding walk around with.

Speaker 1 (52:18):
He doesn't walk around the box because he's like, people
aren't that superstitious anymore.

Speaker 2 (52:22):
The box is like spoiler alert misdirection, Oh okay, and
so he's like, oh, I'm not going to do that, okay,
but you know, it's it's a big hit. People love it.

Speaker 1 (52:32):
Crowds are so great he has to like keep it
open every single day. So up until this point, the
chess player the mechanical turk always went first because his
side of the board is white. At this point, to
like make it jazzier and more impressive, mental will let
the opponent go first using black, which is like not traditional,
and he will also have the mechanical turk be down

(52:54):
upon as like a little handicap.

Speaker 2 (52:57):
He'll like upon I thought you said like a pawn,
like once upon a time, Like he is down upon.

Speaker 1 (53:04):
What down a pawn chess piece does he is he
losing more? Not really so he's like quote giving odds
of pawn and move, and over three hundred games of
this he loses about six.

Speaker 2 (53:19):
Thought's really good, Oh, really good.

Speaker 1 (53:21):
Although I will say, like for me, like you have
a chess playing robot in theory, that's what you're saying
you have. Why do you need to like make it
harder for you to like, I guess to me, I'm like,
what's impressive. Isn't that it's good at chess. It's impressive
that it's like playing at all, Like you're purporting to
have made a chess playing robot. Why do you need

(53:42):
to like be like and I can win with less
one less pawn. Does that make it more impressive to you?

Speaker 2 (53:48):
I think it makes it like fresh?

Speaker 1 (53:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:50):
Well, like if you're like, if you've lived in a
world where we already accept that there's a chess playing robot.

Speaker 1 (53:56):
Yeah that's fair. And I mean again, people at this
point are writing. This man Robert Willis writes this.

Speaker 2 (54:02):
Pain like if you taught a dog to sing like
you want it to sing. Well, yeah, that's true.

Speaker 1 (54:09):
So this man, Robert Willis writes this pamphlet in eighteen
twenty one, trying to come up with how it's done.
And his determination is like he's like, okay, first, it's
impossible for a robot to think. Quote, it cannot usurp
and exercise the faculties of mind. It cannot be made
to vary its operations so as to meet the ever
varying circumstances of a game of chess. So he's like,

(54:31):
I know, it's a cabinet. It's a you know, parlor trick.
His explanation is that like a player moves up into
the turk's torso and guides.

Speaker 2 (54:41):
The hand like a puppet. I guess like kind of
a big bird situation. Yeah, Okay.

Speaker 1 (54:46):
This guy goes on to become a professor of mathematics
at Cambridge. Smart dude, and his grandpa, incidentally, was the
one who cured George the Third's first out of madness.

Speaker 2 (54:54):
I just find that interesting. Okay. So these people have
thought a lot about what the mind can and cannot do.

Speaker 1 (54:58):
But you know what, someone is in London at this
time who actually thinks computers might be capable of reasoning.

Speaker 2 (55:05):
Okay, and it's a man named Charles Babbage. Does that
sounds really familiar?

Speaker 4 (55:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:10):
So he sees the Turk play in March eighteen nineteen
and again the next year, and he's like very impressed
with the mechanisms of the movement. He's positive that it's
under human control. He's like, this is not actually an automaton,
but you know, and he doesn't know how. He's like,
I can't figure it out, I know, but I can.
This is a person doing it.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:30):
But he's still like very inspired by this question of
whether a chess playing machine is possible. And Charles Babbage
is going to work on this thing called the difference
engine and then later the analytical Engine, which are precursors
to the modern computer. Yes, Like he basically figures out like, oh,
actually a computer would be capable of playing jazz. So

(55:56):
Mittel continues on his tour. He goes to Amsterdam, where
if you remember, there was a guy who's still mad
that he stole his metronome.

Speaker 2 (56:04):
Yeah, anyone would be. He tries to get Metzal investigated
for piracy and he is basically forced to admit that
he stole the design, but then it bound is immediately
before he faces any consequences. Does another season in London,
goes to Paris, hit by another lawsuit, this time from
Eugene for failure to make payments. Yeah, no kidding, So

(56:28):
he tries to sell the churk Off to pay his debts.
At this point, there's no bite posses give it back
to Eugene.

Speaker 1 (56:34):
Well he doesn't want to, because it's like what he's
gonna use to make money, But at this point no
one buys it, presumably because they're like, well it's not
really yours to sell. Yeah okay, yeah, but he does
what any I guess showman would do in this situation,
which is just say off to America.

Speaker 2 (56:53):
Uh huh, the land of running away from your debt.

Speaker 1 (56:55):
Land of running away from your debt. He lands in
New York in eighteen twenty six. Big Crowds in New
York sells out a lot of newspaper coverage. Something slightly
different is happening here. He's the chess mechanical Turk is
playing only end games, which means you sort of like
set up a puzzle, and he would let opponents pick

(57:16):
out of a book like which end game they would
want to play, And he would also let the opponents
pick which whether they want to be black or white,
which side they want to be and uh, but the
Turk would always start, which kind of meant that like
it would always win, right, Like if you know the
tricks of this book, Like if you know all the
end games, you kind of can like know all.

Speaker 2 (57:37):
The puzzles, right, and you could program them into a computer. Yeah,
in theatery potentially.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
Uh, Eugene at this point had died, but his family
representatives do follow.

Speaker 5 (57:48):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
Yeah, these are the descendants of the step kids of Napoleon.
They've got that dog in him.

Speaker 1 (57:56):
In case you're wondering, he does look settle up, so
like we don't worry about that anymore. The Turk is
not playing full games, but there is a lot of
public pressure from a man named Greco who's kind of
like New York's leading chess player, and he wants to
play a full game against the Turk, but the Turk
is like no, no. It comes up with all these excuses,
comes up up with the excuses, and then goes to Boston.

(58:19):
And there's like a big rivalry between New York and
Boston over like who are better chess players. It will
some other stuff, but like at this point with the Turk,
they're like hmm. And the Turk does start playing full
games in Boston and loses a match, which causes people
in Boston to start bragging about how they're the best.

(58:40):
Greco writes into a newspaper issuing a challenge. Metal doesn't
respond yet. It beats a bunch of players. It beats
most of the players, but does lose to a guy
named doctor Benjamin Green, who, as you know, it's like
big bragging rights I beat the right, goes to Philadelphia.
It does briefly stop in New York City again and
says it will rise to Greco's challenge.

Speaker 2 (59:03):
The okay, but first I want to get a slice
of pizza.

Speaker 1 (59:12):
Yeah, he's like, should we put money on it?

Speaker 2 (59:15):
Let's meet privately.

Speaker 1 (59:17):
Metzel says, look, my turk is still packed up because
we're on our way to Philadelphia. But like you're bragging
about how players in New York City are the best,
better than European players, would you be willing to play
my associate, my sort of right hand man and secretary,
a man named Schlumberger, Because if you're better, then you know,

(59:37):
if you if you're saying you can beat the turk,
like you're saying you can bet European players, play my secretary.
Greco loses to Schlumberger and then issues of public apology
saying that, like, you know what, American chess players were
beaten by a foreigner. So I love to see a
man humbled goes to Philadelphia, goes to Baltimore where the

(59:59):
MCA turk. I find this very charming. He plays a
man named Charles Carroll, who is eighty nine years old
and at this point the last living signer of the
Declaration of Independence, and like, the Turk loses, but it
plays like really badly, like it was like one move
away from winning and then like made a silly move

(01:00:20):
so it's like it lost.

Speaker 2 (01:00:22):
I like that. I like that, I like giving a
win to an old guy. Yeah, so it's like it
lost to the old guy, which is cute. And at
this point, while it's in Baltimore, two young boys climb
onto a roof nearby and they look down and they
they write into a newspaper and say, hey, we were
hanging out on a roof and we saw a guy
climb out of that machine. The newspaper publish, first publishes

(01:00:45):
its account, and then later is like, well, it was
like two boys were not corroborated, you know, it was
like uncorroborated. And then also other newspapers are like, you
stupid idiots, Like that was MATEL trying to drum up publicity,
like he was trying to be like can you like yeah,
So people then accuse that newspaper of like falling for
a hoax, of like there were never two boys you saw.

(01:01:08):
He was just trying to be like all press is
good press, sure, but it doesn't sound like he really
needs press. No, But that's so okay. Well, putting a
pin in that bit.

Speaker 1 (01:01:18):
A little bit, because another like very American thing that
I think that happens is like there's a lot of imitators.

Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
At this point, I was about to say, because the
guy who invented this originally, yeah, someone else could invent
I mean, he wasn't like the most genius person in
the whole wide world. He was like very smart, but
it did all that stuff in Austria.

Speaker 1 (01:01:37):
But like there is like a quote unquote American chess player,
but he's like less impressive robotically, which is again you're like, whoa,
The mechanical turck was invented decades ago, but still it
is less impressive mechanically, and it's also worse at chess.

Speaker 2 (01:01:53):
See Okay, so you're right. You just said why does
it have to be good at chess? Because if it's
not good at chess, it's not as impressive. You're right.
I eat my words.

Speaker 1 (01:02:02):
He Metchel like tries to buy it to like get
it off the market. The players refuse, but like that's
actually not a big deal. It like is eventually sold.
It's like less good at just no one really cares
about it. There's an automaton whist player that is whist
like a game, I guess a card game.

Speaker 2 (01:02:20):
I think I never heard of this.

Speaker 1 (01:02:23):
He buys it and then take a shot Lizzie Logan
because we're about to get a camp P. T.

Speaker 2 (01:02:28):
Barnum. P. T. Barnum writes in his memoir that he
meets this is like this is out of a movie.
This really is my favorite scene. Dana is like wriggling
around in her chair. She's like having a cane. He P. T.

Speaker 1 (01:02:42):
Barnum in his My according Memoirs, meets Metzel at this
point is the greatest showman and right quote that he P. T.
Barnum was pleased with Metal's assurance that I would certainly
make a successful showman, like.

Speaker 2 (01:03:01):
Like at the beginning of the movie, Ye guess the
goods kid, exactly, you got the goods to trick people.

Speaker 1 (01:03:05):
One day you'll be the greatest showman. Also, the mechanical
check is kind of like Forrest Gump, Like it just
like keeps appearing throughout history.

Speaker 2 (01:03:14):
Like meeting. It's like and that little kid with Steve Jobs,
Well you know who it's about to meet. Okay, it's
already met Ben Franklin. Yeah, it's already met Napoleon. Yep,
it's already met P. T. Barnum, It's already met a
signer of the Declaration of Well, did Ben Franklin sign
the Decoration of Inpendence?

Speaker 4 (01:03:32):
I think?

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
Okay, So it's now met two signers of the Decoration
of Independance. Who else could it possibly meet?

Speaker 1 (01:03:36):
Well, it goes down to Richmond, Virginia in eighteen thirty
five and meets a young reporter writing for the Southern
Literary Messenger named Edgar Allan Poe and Edgar A. And
Poe writes this famous essay explaining how he thinks it works.
Is he right, no, okay, And he's close though, he's like,

(01:03:57):
it's like pretty good. His conclusion is basically the same
as that young guy Willis's, which is like the cabinet
is like there's movable partitions, it's like a trick cabinet.
There's someone in there. And he does think that someone
moves up into the turk's body, and he points out,
he does make the very intelligent observation that you never
see that Schlumberger guy in the same place as the turk,

(01:04:20):
and you know there was a moment when Schlumberger was
ill and the Turk's performances stops.

Speaker 2 (01:04:27):
So it's like just like happened to be quite short.

Speaker 1 (01:04:31):
I don't know actually but again Edgar ound Poe. People
say that he's like famous for inventing the detective story.
That's like a thing that like and like this article
that he wrote which is very interesting that I will
you know, link to. In the episode description is kind
of structured and written like a detective story. It is like,

(01:04:53):
here's the situation, here's my investigation, here are my observations,
here's my conclusion. So he's kind of mass bring the form,
just like another interesting cameo. Meanwhile, the tour continues around
the US New Orleans eventually Havana. I think Mettel realizes
this time, like with the Imitator, like, look, I'm not

(01:05:14):
going to just get by on my mechanical turk. I
need like my whole little museum collection. So while he's
like working on a bigger, better version of the conflagration
of Moscow, he builds like a diorama of the Pyrrhic
fires and like has a few other little like cabinet tricks,
oh kbinet of curiosity tricks. But then you know, things
take a turn for the worst. In November of eighteen

(01:05:37):
thirty seven, he's going on a second tour of Havana,
but in the spring of that year, Schlumberger, his right
hand man and secretary, dies of yellow fever. Oh yeah,
it never says anywhere, and there's no evidence that they're lovers,
but I like to imagine the lack okay, because he's
really sad when he dies. The rest of Mental's company

(01:05:59):
does hurt him. He's in debt from building his new
better Conflagration of Moscow, and he's like alone on a
ship and like this is like the saddest detail to me.
He's on this ship coming back from Havana. The captain
sees him sitting alone with a travel chess set and
challenges him to a game of chess.

Speaker 2 (01:06:18):
It's like chess, I know.

Speaker 1 (01:06:20):
And Metzl wins one game and then plays a second
game and loses, and he's like a bad sport about it,
and like goes to his cabin, stays there for six
days straight drinking, and then the like people in the
cabin in the ship find him.

Speaker 2 (01:06:34):
He died and he's buried at sea. July. Oh, he
dies dies too on the ship. That is that's not
just sad, that's like yeah, man.

Speaker 1 (01:06:45):
And I will say, like for a guy who was
like a con man and plagiarist. Like people are sad
when he dies, like it's nice obituaries because he was
like a good entertainer. Yeah, and this is kind of
the era where it's like it was entertainment. He wasn't,
like I mean, it sounds like he was.

Speaker 2 (01:07:03):
Like bad with money con Man, not like promising you
riches and taking your money and absconding in the night
and leaving you pregnant with the bad debts con Man.
I mean, like, again, there's a difference.

Speaker 1 (01:07:17):
The goal was entertainment always, which like as far as
hoaxes go, I kind of always am on the side
of like, well that's like you know, and noble hoax.
If it's like consensual entertainment, sure, like a magic show.

Speaker 2 (01:07:29):
And also I can't imagine the tickets to this work
costs very much.

Speaker 1 (01:07:32):
No, And I don't think people were going like they
weren't being like I'm going to install a chess playing
robot technology in my home. You just get to like
go and be like that's cool and go about your day.

Speaker 2 (01:07:45):
And if you found out that it wasn't real, you
wouldn't be like, my.

Speaker 4 (01:07:47):
Life is alive.

Speaker 1 (01:07:48):
I do kind of think of it as like a magician,
where like if you see a magician like a good
magic trick, you're I have no idea how that worked.
That was great, but like you kind of know it's
not real, but you can still be impressed.

Speaker 2 (01:07:59):
I mean, yeah, they don't sew a lady in half.
I hope everybody everyone knows that.

Speaker 1 (01:08:03):
So with that, as I mentioned, like Mitchel was in
debt from like building his new conflagration of Moscow, and
like the businessman who had loaned him money, takes possession
of his things, tries to auction off the turk.

Speaker 2 (01:08:16):
No one really.

Speaker 1 (01:08:17):
Buys it, so he basically just buys it to himself
for four hundred dollars the equivalent of about like twelve
thousand dollars today.

Speaker 2 (01:08:24):
Who buys it?

Speaker 1 (01:08:25):
This businessman, oh John, He just sort of like took
possession of Mantel's things. But then there's this man John
kerz Lee Mitchell, who actually is Edgar around Poe's personal
physician at this point, and he is very curious about
how the mechanical turk works, Like he likes the history,
he thinks it's cool, and he basically crowdsources buy it

(01:08:48):
so that everyone can pay to like see how it works.
He's like, buy a ticket to like join my club,
will buy the robot and like figure out how it works. Yeah,
and he does, and in eighteen forty like people he
either five or ten dollars, he has seventy five like
quote unquote subscribers.

Speaker 2 (01:09:04):
They buy the machine.

Speaker 1 (01:09:07):
Unfortunately for him, it was like separated in a bunch
of crates, like pieces seem to be missing, and there's
like a lot of like red herring pieces, like presumably
because like when it was traveling place to place, they
like didn't want everyone who unloaded the boxes to know
how it works. So like it's kind of hard to
put back together. It's a tricky puzzle. But eventually he

(01:09:29):
does public performances for his like little club of people
where they would like do the performance and then like
show ever and how it works. He kind of loses
interests at a certain point because he's like, I don't
want everyone coming over to my office to see how
this works. Like we figured this out. He donated to
the Philadelphia Museum aka known at this point as the
Chinese Museum, because like, once you know the secret, it's

(01:09:52):
less interesting. It's like a cool historical object, but like,
what are you gonna.

Speaker 2 (01:09:55):
Do with it, but I want to know the secret.

Speaker 1 (01:09:58):
Well, it does a few acasional shows at the museum,
but like now that there's no showman, yeah, it's not
really no one really cares. Okay, it's relegated to the
back of the museum. And then July fifth, eighteen fifty four,
I have some really bad news.

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
Is it burned down?

Speaker 1 (01:10:15):
A fire starts at a National theater in nearby reaches
the museum. John Mitchell's son Silas, recounts that like he
ran to the museum to try to save it, and he,
like very romantically recounts like I don't like to see it.

Speaker 2 (01:10:29):
He does.

Speaker 1 (01:10:29):
He says that he heard it say it's final words
like chick and burned down. At this point, though, I'm
going to put you out of your misery because.

Speaker 2 (01:10:38):
This is my curiosity, like horniness for this information.

Speaker 1 (01:10:43):
Well, so Silas where Mitchell, the son of the guy
who like purchased it for the club, is like, you
know what, now that it's burned down, now that doesn't exist,
I will publish the answer.

Speaker 2 (01:10:55):
Okay. Side note Silas.

Speaker 1 (01:10:57):
Where Mitchell the guy, the son of the guy who
published the answer, is also the guy who invented the
rest cure for women, which is like, if you're sick,
just sit in bed and do nothing.

Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
Someone had to invent that. Well, like it's a bad ideas,
like ancient wisdom.

Speaker 1 (01:11:12):
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, did you have to read the Yellow
wallpaper in college about that woman who it goes crazy? Well,
he treated her and she read the short story about
going nuts, because that's not a way to treat women.

Speaker 2 (01:11:23):
Okay, that's that's him.

Speaker 1 (01:11:25):
He's published in Answers and also coming up with sort
of a Victorian cures for curing women.

Speaker 2 (01:11:32):
I do think, like go hang out by the seaside.
That's a good cure. Away from everyone who's bothering you,
is like a good cure.

Speaker 1 (01:11:39):
Yeah, but like sit in a bed and you can't
read or like interact with anyone or do anything would
be torture. But okay, here is the answer. As he
publishes it, people were right about like details about their theories,
but no one had put it all together.

Speaker 2 (01:11:56):
Yeah, it's like everybody got five percent, got everyone got
kind of like fifty percent. Okay, but here's the kind
of the amazing thing, Like this is decades later, like
it is almost one hundred years later that this guy
invented this like magic trick really and like no one
figured it out, which is like, great, good job, this
successful piece of entertainment. It's like a chess move.

Speaker 1 (01:12:18):
The way it worked is that bottom drawer did not
extend all the way back correct on that inside. I'm
going to try to find a picture that I think
will sum this up really well. Here we go inside.
There is a sliding seat, so if you're on a seat,
it slides back and forth, so there is surprise surprise

(01:12:40):
a person inside. Someone is like crouched at the back,
and when he's showing the front right, he's like back,
he like sells a chair back.

Speaker 2 (01:12:49):
Basically, you're in whatever part of the box is not
on display.

Speaker 1 (01:12:55):
Yes, And then when he's like displaying the bigger compartment,
you pull slide the sliding chair FOURD and he can
open that one and then when it closes you can
sort of sit up right. And the way it worked
it's actually kind of amazing technology because like, Okay, what
is your theory of how he would know what was

(01:13:15):
happening on the chess game. There's a guy sitting in
the cabinet that much we know.

Speaker 2 (01:13:21):
This is not my theory. This is my half remembered
explanation from this YouTube video. Okay, is that like basically
there was like a magnet version. I'm picturing it like
upside down of the chessboard, so that they could just

(01:13:43):
sort of know what was going on up there.

Speaker 1 (01:13:48):
I mean, that's that's the basic idea. So what it
is what you should picture is on the roof of
the the box cabinet. Imagine little strings hold like magnetized
little discs. Yeah, And all of the chess pieces have
magnets in them, so when a piece is on a square,

(01:14:10):
the little disc is magnetized up. And if you pick
a piece up, it drops on the string right, So
then it would like bounce on the string and you could.

Speaker 2 (01:14:18):
Be like, ah, that guy picked up that piece.

Speaker 1 (01:14:19):
Yeah, and then when you put it on a new square,
that little magnetized disc jumps up to magnetize, right, so
he could follow the game upside down, yes, and then
he would have his own board, like he would be
able to move this thing that then would move the
arm of the turk in a corresponding.

Speaker 2 (01:14:38):
Way like an autograph machine. An autograph machine exactly.

Speaker 5 (01:14:42):
So you see it's like he was so basically it's
like we're talking like a series of interconnected sticks going
from my hand up to the Turk's hand, so that
if I move my hand.

Speaker 2 (01:14:58):
Two inches north, its hand moves two inches north. So
I can operate it from below and you open your hand,
I close the hand, open claw, pick up piece, clothes
claw exactly, yes, And he could make make the turk nod.

Speaker 1 (01:15:18):
He could make him roll his eyes with little mechanisms inside.
He could also just make like generic whirring sounds, like
generically if he had like coffer sneeze, it would make
like machine sounds to cover the coffer sneeze. There was
sort of a it's not like that important, but like
a little number code system that they could twist inside
outside like imagine just like a little simple thing where

(01:15:41):
like numbers would appear on the outside to communicate little
messages back and forth to be like my candle went out,
and then he could like come down and like readjust
the you know, mechanics relight the candle. The reason that
the Turk always had a candelabra on the table wasn't
just to light the game, but also to know how
no to disguise the smoke of the other, which is

(01:16:05):
pretty clever, and it leads to my next point that
there's like a lot of like literature and stories about
this because it's like very romantic. There's also this story
that is unfortunately not true, that says, like, Okay, before
Compellan built his mechanical turk, he was in Russia working
on his speaking machine, and he ran into this Polish
revolutionary who had led an uprising against the Russian army

(01:16:28):
and which there was that was real, and he had
lost his legs in battle, but he can't get out
of Russia because he's a wanted man. And so while
they're holed up in a cabin, Compellan realizes that he
is amazing at chess, and he builds this mechanical turk
to like sneak him out of Russia. Funny, and like
then there's another like.

Speaker 2 (01:16:49):
But then he actually did solve a mystery and gets
several wrongfully imprisonment out of jail.

Speaker 1 (01:16:53):
So yeah, apparently, so like there's a lot of romantic stories,
and I, you know, I think it's very like it
raises very interesting questions about thinking and what a machine
can do, because, as you mentioned, like now robots can
play chess. There's a very famous period where a i'll

(01:17:15):
say robot, machine, computer, computer is the word named deep
Blue will play against the chess grand master Kasparov and
it'll beat him. And it's like a computer can now
beat a grand master, and like nowadays machines can play
chess like they're nothing. But like I will ask you
the philosophical question if you don't mind me taking a

(01:17:35):
few moments, like a lot of times those machines. I'm
not an expert in computers, but at least the way
deep Blue was playing and deep thought, which is like precursor,
it's kind of like rote information. It knows all the
possible moves and then it sort of reads okay, based

(01:17:56):
on this position, like here are all the possible moves
I could make like information trees, and just there's a
lot of computational power that it can store all that
information and then apply it. But like, is a computer
thinking if it is plain chess? Is my question to you,
I mean, what is thinking? So there's a famous thought experiment.

(01:18:18):
I think therefore it am there's a famous thought experiment
I barely called the Chinese room thought experiment that like
this whole thing kind of reminds me of which is
this idea that like it was written in the I
say nineteen nineteen eighty by a man named John Searle,
who said, like, imagine you are in a room. To

(01:18:39):
the best of my anlogy, you do not speak Chinese. No,
but imagine you had a I can say, anyhow well done.
Imagine you had a book that basically like, you're in
a room, someone slides a piece of paper under the
door with a Chinese symbol, and you have a big
old book that is like if someone gives you this
symbol right back this symbol, and so someone writes you
a Chinese symbol, you and like, you write the Chinese

(01:19:01):
symbol back, and then they write you a different Chinese symbol,
and then you figure out reading the book and send
a Chinese symbol back. That person on the other side
would be like, Wow, this person is writing to me
back and forth in Chinese, but you do not understand Chinese.

Speaker 2 (01:19:16):
So they think we're having a conversation, yeah, and you
want I'm just being a little computer. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:19:20):
And so the question is like, I guess the philosophical
argument is like you are playing that game, but you
do not understand Chinese. A computer can say like, okay,
if a piece moves here, then like statistically I should
move my piece here. But does that mean it like
understands Yeah, And.

Speaker 2 (01:19:38):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (01:19:40):
I don't like this is now with questions of like
ai is it just like a lot of these like
language models are just like filling in like predictive text.

Speaker 2 (01:19:50):
But are they thinking? I don't. These are like.

Speaker 1 (01:19:52):
Questions that I think philosophers are going to be reckoning
with for for a long time.

Speaker 2 (01:19:57):
I know, because it's also like I won't speak for
why chess players play chess. I think that depends player
to player, but a lot of them are like they
might they might be doing it for like the love
of the game. Yeah you know what I mean. Like
I didn't understand running for a really long time where
I was like where are you going? I still don't,
but it's like, oh, they they just like to run,

(01:20:20):
like they just like to Is that.

Speaker 1 (01:20:22):
In favor of playing chess against humans or playing against run?

Speaker 2 (01:20:25):
I'm just like, do you have to know? Do you
have to understand what a game of chess is? Like?
Isn't the act of computing what the best chess move
is like that is what chess is. Yeah, regardless of
the outcome. That's that's a good argument, say, you know
what I mean, that's what they like about it, the
fact they like sitting there thinking about it. Yeah, not

(01:20:47):
that it doesn't have a deeper meaning to those people,
but it's like that's like what they enjoy about it
is the you know what I mean, Like swimming laps
seems like so freaking boring to me, but it's like
that's what swimmers like about it is the meditative, you
know what I mean. I mean, this is the.

Speaker 1 (01:21:01):
Bigger philosophical question. Someone like John Seerl would argue that,
like there is something more to playing chess or like
understanding Chinese than just like writing the correct characters. But
I think plenty of people like you would argue, like, no,
it is the action that defines the thought process.

Speaker 2 (01:21:20):
Well, like that there is something more like within that
action that, like the action thinking through it is the
ultimate form of it. So are you saying, like just
my computers are thinking or no, I don't know. I
think they're playing chess. They are playing chess. I think
they are playing chess. I don't know if they're thinking.

Speaker 1 (01:21:40):
I think just like a fun thing about about the
mechanical turk is do you remember a Tesla we robot
event in twenty twenty four when they had like Tesla
bots they call it, I guess they're called Optimists, but they.

Speaker 2 (01:21:54):
Were electronic drinks.

Speaker 1 (01:21:55):
Yeah, but they're actually tele operated by humans.

Speaker 2 (01:21:59):
Yes. Do you remember when Amazon tried to do a
whole grocery store where you didn't have to like do
check out Amazon, just walk away? Wait, but I want
to finish this point, yes, because I was just about
to say it was the exact same.

Speaker 1 (01:22:10):
Thing where like it actually is people keeping track of it. Yes, yeah,
it's not robots. Yeah, it's just people.

Speaker 2 (01:22:16):
And it is the same as the Tesla the things,
and it was just it's like the same way that
RC cars work. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:22:22):
I just think it's very funny that, like it's been
one hundred and fifty years since more than it's been
two hundred and fifty years since the mechanical turk, and
Tesla was still doing a mechanical turk just as like
a better looking robot.

Speaker 2 (01:22:37):
I would say, equally looking. I don't think those Tesla
bots are particularly cool looking.

Speaker 1 (01:22:43):
Well, Lizzie, that that's our show that's the story. That's
the decade spanning story of them mechanicals.

Speaker 2 (01:22:50):
That is an epic odyssey of chessness. Who would you
cast in the movie of this?

Speaker 1 (01:22:57):
Oh my gosh, I mean it's the obvious one. I'm
just think British period piece, but no need for it
to be British. It could be anyway. Timothy Shallamy always
Timothy Austin Butler, he has the juice.

Speaker 2 (01:23:09):
I think Austin Butler would be good as the Turk.
As the Turk, he can do anything. He's kind of
weak up the Lord. He can do anything. Yes, he's
such a good creature that is built now. And maybe
Anthony Hopkins as an inventor of some kind. Damn, I
don't want that. It's pretty good, Lizzie. Where can the
good people find you? The good people can find us

(01:23:29):
as at Hoax the Podcast on Instagram and you can.

Speaker 1 (01:23:32):
Email us at Hoax Thepodcast at gmail dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:23:36):
If you know how to play chess, good for you.

Speaker 1 (01:23:40):
Yeah, let's play online. I'll make a chess dot com
account and we can play. Email me or you know,
go on the Instagram, follow us and dm us here
chest log in and I'll play you online.

Speaker 2 (01:23:51):
Yes, and I will watch.

Speaker 1 (01:23:54):
Thank you so much for listening. Please, if you like
this podcast enjoy listening to it, please rate, review and subscribe,
vibe and.

Speaker 2 (01:24:00):
Please hoax responsibly.

Speaker 4 (01:24:02):
Bye.

Speaker 2 (01:24:12):
Hoax is a production of iHeart Podcasts. Our hosts are
Danas Schortz and Lizzie Logan. Our executive producers are Matt
Frederick and Trevor Young, with supervising producer Rima L. Kali
and producers Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk. Our theme music
was composed by Laine Montgomery. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get

(01:24:34):
your podcasts. Thanks for listening.