Clockwork game

By Jane Irwin

Subjects: Automaton chess players, Échecs (Jeu), Histoire, Comic books, strips, Bandes dessinées, Hoaxes, Canulars, Chess, History

Description: In 1769, the court of Empress Maria Theresa witnessed one of that era's most amazing feats of engineering: a machine that could play chess. Artfully constructed by a Hungarian nobleman named Wolfgang von Kempelen, the chess machine played a unique game against each opponent, far surpassing the abilities of all its fellow automata. Throughout its eighty-five year career, audiences across Europe and the Americas flocked to see the mechanical marvel seemingly capable of human intelligence; Napoleon, Charles Babbage, and Benjamin Franklin were among its challengers, and Edgar Allen Poe wrote an essay attempting to explain how it worked.