This is the Turk, a mechanical chess playing robot from the 1700’s that was basically unbeatable. It made its own moves, called checkmate and even laughed in its opponent’s face. For almost 90 years, it toured the world, facing some of the best chess players and historical figures, and beating them all. Hundreds of articles were written trying to expose its secrets – but no one ever figured out how it worked, or if it was actually real or not.

Amazingly, the real secret behind this mysterious machine remained unknown for almost 90 years, and was almost lost completely when the Turk eventually perished in a fire.

We modeled the entire thing to show you how this incredible machine worked and how it managed to trick the entire world for almost a century.

Origins of the Turk

This story begins in Vienna in 1769, where a special event was being held by the Empress of Austria. At the event, the audience were being treated to a show by a famous French magician, who performed illusions using magnets. While the audience was blown away, one man was less than impressed, Hungarian inventor Wolfgang Von Kempelen. He worked for the Empress, and promised that he would come back next year with a much more impressive creation of his own.

And so, over the next 6 months, in the secrecy of his own home, Kempelen constructed the Turk; a life-sized figure dressed in Ottoman clothing staring down at a chessboard. Kempelen revealed his creation at the next event and it was an absolute hit. The audience watched on in amazement, as this mysterious looking mannequin came to life, moving around the chess pieces and destroying his opponent. Word quickly spread about the Turk and soon, hundreds of people around Europe wanted to take on the machine.

The Turk goes on tour

But Kempelen had achieved his goal of impressing the Empress, and he wanted to work on more serious inventions. 10 years went by, but the demand to see the Turk was higher than ever, and so Kempelen took the machine out on the road, starting its first European tour in 1783. This is how a typical show would go.

At the beginning, Kempelen would go around opening the cabinet doors and inviting people to look inside the machine. Starting with the left door, it would reveal a compartment full of complex machinery. To show that there was nothing hiding behind the machinery, he opened a door at the back and lit a candle, so that the audience could see right through the machine.

He then closed the rear door and opened up the main compartment, which was mostly empty. With all the doors still open, Kempelen pulled out a set of chess pieces from the drawer at the bottom. The Turk was now ready to play. Kempelen would challenge the most intelligent member of the audience to try and beat the Turk – but almost always, the Turk would come out on top. 

Kempelen and his machine continued traveling across Europe, playing some of the most skilled chess masters of the time. For the final game in France, the Turk went up against Benjamin Franklin, who was working in Paris as an ambassador. Despite being a chess fanatic, the Turk quickly defeated him with ease. After this, speculation behind the machine’s authenticity started to ramp up. While many believed it really was a completely automated machine, some thought it was being controlled by magnets and some thought there was a small child operating the Turk from inside. 

Kempelen passes away

But Kempelen was determined to take the secret to his grave and in 1804, he passed away at the age of 70. The Turk was eventually sold to a German inventor called Johann Maelzel for around 300,000 dollars. Over the course of several years, he figured out the Turk’s secrets and took it back out on the road, this time finding even more success in America.

But one day after performing in Baltimore, an article was written in the local newspaper that appeared to give away the Turk’s secrets. Two young boys had climbed onto the Turk’s storage shed and saw Maelzel opening the cabinet and a man climbing out of it. A few days later, the newspaper retracted the article because the boy’s story couldn’t be verified.

Maelzel’s Turk success

After figuring out the secrets behind his new machine, Maelzel took the Turk back out on the road. One of his first opponents was none other than Napoleon Bonaparte, who he defeated with ease. Maelzel and the Turk spent the next 20 years touring all the way from Boston to the Mississippi River, and everywhere in between. The Turk was more popular than ever, but still nobody knew if it was real or not. Mechanical devices were advancing extremely quickly at the time, so the idea of a mechanical chess playing robot seemed entirely possible.

Famous poet Edgar Alan Poe was invited to inspect the machine and ended up writing an essay on how he thought it worked. He thought that there was simply a man underneath the Turk’s clothing that could see the chessboard and was making all of the moves.

Maelzel spent most of the 1830’s touring America and Cuba with great success. But while sailing back to the US, Maelzel suddenly died at sea, and the Turk and all of its secrets were now just waiting to be uncovered once it arrived back.

The machine eventually fell into the hands of Edgar Allan Poe’s physician, who had always been interested in the machine. But by then, the Turk was 70 years old, and without a charismatic owner to put on the show, it was eventually donated to a museum in Philadelphia. It remained here for over a decade, until one day, a fire swept through and completely destroyed the Turk.

It was, no doubt, one of the best kept secrets in the world. It traveled everywhere, constantly under scrutiny from the world’s brightest minds – and yet even through multiple owners, it managed to take its secrets all the way to the end. It seemed like the secrets behind the Turk would remain unknown forever.

But a year later, the son of the Turk’s last owner published an article that would finally reveal the truth. These are the secrets behind the Turk.

The secrets behind the Turk

As it turned out, the Turk wasn’t automated at all, and was in fact operated by a chess master hidden inside the machine at all times. The fake machinery and the bottom drawer didn’t extend all the way to the back of the cabinet, and so there was space for the operator to sit with his legs stretched out under a fake floor. Before the left door was opened, the operator would slide forward on a moveable chair into the main compartment, closing behind him a secret door. The presenter would then open the rear door and show the audience that there was nothing but machinery inside. 

As the presenter closed the rear door, the operator would slide back into his original position, closing another door behind him and in front of him. The presenter would then open up the front and rear doors to the main compartment, spinning the machine around to allow the audience to see inside. Having seen right through the whole machine, the audience would now have full belief that no one could be hidden inside the machine. The doors were then locked and the Turk was ready to come to life.

The operator would slide back into the main compartment and open a hidden door inside the Turk’s body, revealing a candle, a chess board and a mechanical lever which would control the Turk’s arm. The lever was in fact a clever pantograph mechanism using strings that would mimic the exact movement of the Turk’s arm. It had a pointer, which the operator could lift to raise the arm and twist to close the Turk’s fingers. By moving the pointer over the chessboard, it would move the Turk’s hand over the exact same square on the real chessboard. But how did the operator see the moves his opponent was making?

Above the operator was a fake ceiling that could be taken down to reveal the bottom of the real chessboard. Under each square was a small magnet dangling from a copper wire. The chess pieces themselves also had magnets in their base, and so the magnets would get pulled up wherever there was a chess piece. As his opponent picked up a chess piece, the corresponding magnet would drop and wobble for up to 30 seconds, allowing the operator to see what piece had moved and replicate it on his own chessboard.

To this day, the original operator of the Turk is unknown – but during Maezel’s tours, the machine was operated by an impressive list of chess masters, all of whom kept their part of the secret.

Over the course of its 90 year career, the Turk played hundreds, if not thousands of games and won almost all of them. Amazingly, the story of the young boys seeing an operator climb out of the machine was almost certainly true, but the Turk went on to keep it’s secret for another 30 years.

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