The Turk: The Life and Times of the Famous Eighteenth-Century Chess-Playing Machine
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.80 (675 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 0425190390 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 288 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2015-07-30 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
Five Stars My brother loves the book!. "An entertaining account of an intriguing device" according to MarkK. In an age when chess-playing computers are hardly a novelty, it might be hard to imagine just how remarkable people found Wolfgang von Kempelen's automaton. Though little remembered beyond a handful of afficionados today, Kempelen's Turk was a remarkable novelty in its day, one that delighted the Habsburg court and was taken on a triumphal tour of Europe. After Kempelen's death, the Turk passed into the hands of a showman named Johann Maelzel, who again toured Europe with it before taking it to the Unite. From Maria Theresa to Kasparov, by fermed This is a delightful book that takes one cultural artifact (a mechanical chess playing machine that looks like a human being and is dressed in oriental opulence, "The Turk") and follows its entire life, from its conceptualization and manufacture to its final demise in a fire in Philadelphia. The period of the Turk's life lasted 85 years, and the people who somehow met and interacted with it were such luminaries Napoleon, and Charles Babbage (inventor of the first computer, sort of), and P. T. Barnum. Edg
This is the true account of the 18th-century mechanical man, powered by clockwork, dressed in a Turkish costume, and capable of playing chess. Created by a Hungarian nobleman, the machine-man known as The Turk traveled Europe and America, made the acquaintance of Benjamin Franklin, Catherine the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, and Edgar Allan Poe.
This book should appeal to a wide range of readers. From Library Journal The Turk was the name given to a chess-playing automaton created by Wolfgang von Kempelen in order to impress the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria-Hungary. He also provides a fine description of the fascination with automata and magic that was so prevalent in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. . Technology correspondent for the Economist and author of The Victorian Internet, Standage details the appearance and seeming construction of the automaton, following its existence and influence up through its destruction in a fire. Standage concludes