Episode 3131
Mechanical Turk
Sun, 2025-Nov-30 00:30 UTC
Length - 2:28
Direct Link
Welcome to featured Wiki of the Day, your daily dose of knowledge from Wikipedia's finest articles.
The featured article for Sunday, 30 November 2025, is Mechanical Turk.
The Mechanical Turk, also known as the Automaton Chess Player (German: Schachtürke, lit. 'chess Turk'; Hungarian: A Török), or simply the Turk, was a chess-playing machine, first displayed in 1770, which appeared to be able to play a strong game of chess autonomously, but whose pieces were in reality moved via levers and magnets by a chess master hidden in its lower cavity. The machine was toured and exhibited for 84 years as an automaton, and continued giving occasional exhibitions until 1854, when it was destroyed in a fire. In 1857, an article published by the owner's son provided the first full explanation of the mechanism, which had been widely suspected to be a hoax but never accurately described while the machine still existed.
Constructed by Wolfgang von Kempelen to impress Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, the Turk won most games, including those against statesmen such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin. It was purchased in 1804 by Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, who continued to exhibit it. Chess masters who operated it over this later period included Johann Allgaier, Boncourt, Aaron Alexandre, William Lewis, Jacques Mouret and William Schlumberger, but its operators during Kempelen's original tour remain unknown. The device could also perform the knight's tour, a puzzle that required the player to move a knight to visit every square of a chessboard exactly once.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:30 UTC on Sunday, 30 November 2025.
For the full current version of the article, see Mechanical Turk on Wikipedia.
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Until next time, I'm neural Brian.
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