How an Unstoppable 200-Year-Old Robot Fooled the World

hey 42 here automata are machines capable of carrying out actions according to a predetermined set of instructions they are not new inventions with examples cropping got back in ancient greece and china cesibius for example who is thought to have been the first head of the great library of alexandria is known to have invented several water-based automata as early as 200 bc but in 1770 wolfgang von kemphelen unveiled an automaton the likes of which the world has never seen before at the time most automata were nothing more than fairground attractions elaborate illusions built with mechanical wizardry and designed to look impressive and lifelike but von keppelin's machine was different why because it could play chess from a purely technical standpoint the mechanical turk as von kemp helen's automaton was known was impressive able to select any chess piece on the board at will and execute its move perfectly but it wasn't mere technical mastery that sent shockwaves across europe when the turk was first unveiled because whilst playing a game of chess is simply a case of moving the pieces from place to place something any cleverly designed automaton at the time might have achieved winning a game of chess is another matter entirely that requires genuine human intelligence and yet the mechanical turk a mere machine by all accounts almost always one in our world of smartphones and computers it's hard to imagine just how much of a stir the mechanical turk could have caused in its day we're surrounded by machines that can think or at least appear to think on a day-to-day basis but in 1770 the world looked very different we were still lighting our homes with fire for a start the light bulb wouldn't be invented for over a hundred years back then concepts that are so familiar to us today like ai and machine learning hadn't even made it into the pages of science fiction novels that's partly because science fiction novels hadn't even been invented yet of course mary shelley's frankenstein generally considered to be the first science fiction novel would not be published for almost 50 years when the mechanical turk advanced its very first porn in 1770. like many of the world's best inventions wolfgang von kemp helen developed the mechanical turk to impress a girl and not just any girl the queen of hungary and bulgaria and archduchess of austria marry teresa to be exact regular viewers will be delighted to hear that maria happens to be the only female sovereign of the house of habsburg my word those chin wielding royals certainly got around although i am a little sorry to report that maria theresa seems to have escaped the signature sledgehammer chin of her kinsman perhaps feeling a little left out at her facial inadequacies in later life she did try and make up for it by cultivating a fairly impressive double chin instead got to make the parents proud eh the mechanical turk was a life-sized man carved out of wood that sat before a large cabinet on which rested a chessboard when von kemp helen first revealed the automaton to maria theresa at chambrun palace he started by giving the queen a guided tour of the inner workings of the machine something that would become his custom at the start of an exhibition one by one he would open a series of doors in the cabinet shining a candle within to reveal a maze of cogs springs and gears having shown his audience there was no monkey business going on inside the cabinet von ken pelin then asked for a challenger to step forward to play the turk the man who did so was ludwig von kombenzel plenty potentiary minister to the queen and for all you conspiracy theory lovers out there known member of the illuminati unfortunately his chess game didn't exhibit too much enlightenment and to the general astonishment of everyone present he was dispatched by the turk in under 30 minutes several other challengers came forward that day and the turk trounced every single one of them word of the incredible chess playing automaton spread across europe like wildfire but to everyone's surprise von kemp pelham became strangely coy about exhibiting his machine often making obscure claims about the need for repairs to avoid taking on challenges over the course of the next 10 years the turk faced just one more opponent and after the match kemp helen dismantled the turk for good or at least he would have done had maria theresa's son holy roman emperor joseph ii not ordered him to rebuild his autobiton for the state visit of the grand duke paul of russia reluctantly von kemphelen did so and the event was another resounding success such a success in fact that von kempelen agreed to take the turk on a tour of europe the first stop was france where the turk was displayed to the public for the very first time during their stay in paris ron kemp helen and the mechanical turk took on all comers including a chess loving american by the name of benjamin franklin he was working as ambassador to france for the united states at the time the turk put the future founding father to the sword having said that whilst your automaton did win more than its fair share of games against the toughest opponents around it was occasionally bested including by francois andre danikan philidor considered to have been easily the strongest chess player of his day though even he claimed to have been given one of the toughest games of his life the following years saw the turk exhibited in cities across europe before returning to its original home at the schonbrunn palace where it was to stay until von kemphelen's death in 1804 the following year von kenpelin's son sold the machine to a man named johann nepomuk malzel for ten thousand francs it's fair to say that malzel was something of a character during his time as owner of the turk he would make friends with ludwig von beethoven convincing the composer to write a piece of music for him called the battle of victoria but beethoven would later claim marzel had defrauded him by stealing the score and passing it off as his own going so far as to call him a rude churlish man entirely devoid of education or cultivation malzel also found time to take credit for the invention of the metronome which he patented despite the fact that dietrich nicholas winkle was the true inventor marzelle is often erroneously credited with the invention to this day don't you just hate it when you invent a gravity-based timekeeping device and get ripped off perhaps unsurprisingly considering what we know about him marzel's interest in the mechanical turk was largely financial he even managed to sell the automaton for three times what he paid for it at one point though he bought it back again not long after malzel did manage to make improvements to the turk though including adding a voice box that allowed it to declare czech in french when attacking its opponent's king to begin with malzel only puts on exhibitions rarely but every once in a while someone will come along looking for a game who he simply couldn't refuse one such opponent was none other than napoleon bonaparte as we all know napoleon was a military general of rare genius a quick thinker capable of turning any situation to his advantage that might be why he kicked off his game against a turk by breaking one of malzel's golden rules napoleon tried to play as white meaning he took the first move napoleon probably expected marzel to step in but it was the turk himself who was having none of the general shenanigans the automaton shook its wooden head then removed the erroneous piece from the board entirely napoleon nothing if not persistent tried the trick again and then a third time at which point his mechanical adversary apparently lost its temper sweeping its arm across the board and scattering the pieces to the floor napoleon had probably had men guillotine for less but he seemed to like a bit of spunk when it came to automata to malzel's relief the general found the turks antics hilarious napoleon replaced the pieces on the board himself allowed the turk to play white as was its custom and settled in for chess-based war just 19 moves later outmaneuvered and outgunned napoleon bonaparte was beaten whilst people were understandably intrigued and astonished by the mechanical turk many were also more than a little perturbed you see its invention by von kemp helen came hot on the heels of the dawn of the industrial revolution for the first time in human history people were beginning to fear that machines might start to replace them in the workplace it was happening right before their eyes after all and if one of these machines could truly think for itself well the implications were frightening we see these very same fears today with the right of automation robotics and ai a machine capable of logical thought was an outlandish idea but while some people were afraid of the consequences others were simply struck by the possibilities a man named charles babbage played the mechanical turk twice in 1819 losing soundly on both occasions despite the losses or perhaps because of them the idea of a thinking machine lodged itself indelibly in babbage's mind because as you'll have learned if you watched my video on quantum computing charles babbage is credited with having drawn up the designs for the very first computer the analytical engine and he began work on a precursor to that machine the difference engine just two years after losing to the turk so some people were afraid and others inspired but there was another common reaction people had to the turk when faced with a machine that could think for itself they called [ __ ] in 1826 malzel took the turk to america opening an exhibition in new york that drew people in from all over the country amongst them was a young edgar allan poe known today as a titan of american literature but at the time just another reporter for the southern literary messenger poe was absolutely convinced the turk was a fake an elaborate hoax that concealed a simple truth the intelligence behind the turk's chess was not mechanical at all but human he set about trying to prove his thesis with the doggedness of a detective tracking those involved with the turk and watched it play on several occasions his efforts are thought to have inspired him to create c august dupont a fictional detective who appeared in his story the murders in the room morgue the first ever locked room mystery dupont incidentally a remarkable detective who was helped by his unremarkable assistant to solve seemingly impossible crimes is thought to have at least partly inspired the creation of you guessed it sherlock holmes poe's investigations soon bore fruit because in his observations of the turks exhibitions he had seen something strange or more specifically someone strange poe had noticed a man william schlumberger assisting in the setup and dismantling of the turk scrumburger was of medium build with a pronounced stoop and whilst poe always saw him before and after the turks games he never once saw him during them even more interesting poe discovered that when schlumberger fell ill one day before the turk was due to play the game was mysteriously cancelled at short notice had poe known one other key piece of information about schlumberger it would have been an open and short case because malzel's elusive assistant just so happened to be a european chess master poe attempted to uncover the ruse when he published his findings in a popular essay titled malzel's chess player and while some of his assumptions in the piece were dead wrong he believed sclumburger concealed himself within the body of the turk for example poe was in general dead right the turk was not the world's first ai it was an illusion a magic trick an 84 year old hoax that had taken in some of the world's most powerful people and plenty of others besides the real genius of the turk wasn't that it could actually play chess it was that it was convincing enough to fool so many people for so long remember how wolfgang von kenpelin would open the doors to the toast cabinet one by one shining a candle on the inner workings it certainly looked convincing but it was this consecutive opening of the doors that allowed the trick to work the complicated machinery ronkenpellin had stuffed inside was nothing but a smoke screen and for that matter an actual screen there to both distract the viewer and conceal the chess player behind the cogs and gears which did nothing more than make a racquet by the way didn't actually extend all the way through to the back of the cabinet leaving a cavity behind just big enough to house a sliding seat that allowed the chess player within to slip out of sight as the cabinet doors opened and closed once the cabinet was shut and the game ready to begin the hidden player would light a candle the smoke from which escaped from a tube which exited out of the turks turbine and would get ready to play the game a series of magnets built into the chessboard allowed him to see which moves were being made and he was able to make his own moves in response using a device called a pantograph which mirrored his own hand movements on the board above an illusion it may have been but it was an incredibly effective one incidentally william schlungberger wasn't the first chess player to operate the turk and he wouldn't be the last it isn't known who took on the role in von kemp helen's time but malzell used several chess players from all over europe and it's no wonder the turk rarely lost all were strong players one william lewis is thought to have been the first player in history to have been called a grand master aside from their playing strength all of marselle's chess players shared one thing in common they were strapped for cash which is exactly what malzahl used to convince them to play for him though a few did manage to get their own back by blackmailing him mercilessly on the threat of revealing his big secret unsurprisingly malzer left the states not long after poe's essay was published taking the turk to cuba but schlumberger contracted yellow fever during the trip and died taking the turk's chess ability with him to the grave without a skilled player to operate his automaton malzel headed back to the u.s depressed and like many depressed men he turned to drink it was to be the death of him he died from alcohol poisoning during the voyage the turk changed hands a couple of times in the years after eventually being bought by edgar allan poe's personal physician john cursely mitchell who donated it to the peel museum in baltimore where it would remain largely forgotten until a fire broke out in the museum in 1854. mitchell arrived on the scene just in time to watch the turk burn unable to intervene due to the ferocious heat he claims to have been able to hear the automaton's last desperate words above the roaring flames check check check check check well that's going to give me nightmares with the automaton destroyed mitchell's son silly ass decided it was high time to finally come clean he published a series of essays in chess weekly that explained exactly how the turk had fooled the world no longer afoot the game was simply up the amazing chess playing automaton had gained great renown in its 84 years playing in royal courts going to war with generals taking on some of the greatest chess minds of its time and inspiring inventions that changed the world its story which pitted a cold machine intelligence against the best mankind had to offer captured imaginations around the world in a way that wouldn't be seen again until gary kasparov took on ibm supercomputer deep blue in 1996. kasparov was the victor in that one but ibm and deep blue were back the following year and this time they took kasparov down but in an interesting parallel to the mechanical turks own story there were those present who smelt a rat and since edgar allan poe was long dead by this point it was left to kasparov himself to call [ __ ] for most of game one deep blue had been making the kind of moves kasparov expected of a computer logical calculating predictable but then in the end game the supercomputer made a move that shocked the world chess champion to his marrow not because of its strength per se but because of its imagination to kasparov it didn't seem like a computer move at all and he became convinced that just like the mechanical turk deep blue was being helped out by a human mind or in this case a team of chess grandmasters working in tandem to thwart him it was a conspiracy theorist's wet dream not least because ibm delayed the release of their computer logs for some time after the match and even went as far to dismantle deep blue after its victory reminding anyone of a certain wolfgang von kenpellin dismantling the turk after his performance at the sean broome palace by any chance and if you're looking for a motive here look no further ibm's share price is said to have risen by some 20 in the aftermath of the victory as it happens kasparov was right when he said the stunning human-like move from game one was not the product of honouring machine logic but it wasn't the work of a team of chess grand masters either so what was it a bug in deep blues programming actually which had prevented the computer from playing its preferred move to overcome the error a fail-safe mode had kicked in in which the supercomputer deep blue simply played a move at random unlike the mechanical turk whose opponents thought they were playing a machine but were really playing a man kasparov thought he was playing a man when in fact he was really playing a machine still these days chess computers are light years ahead of the world's best players and us non-grand masters are likely to be trounced every time by a simple smartphone application there's no getting around it the times when an old chess master hidden in a cabinet behind a big wooden doll could take the world by storm are well and truly over mostly pity if you ask me thank you for watching you can now pre-order my new book sticker flagging it on amazon link in the description thank you

Channel: Thoughty2

Views: 1,858,415

Rating: 4.9363403 out of 5

Keywords: chess, mechanical turk, turk, ai, artificial intelligence, chess strategy, chess grandmaster, chess moves, chess talk, chess game, chess videos, chess tricks, cheating, cheat, history, story

Id: uiHxvR15SbA

Length: 21min 49sec (1309 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 16 2020