6 ms·
The Turk
- sspencer 8y ago> John Gaughan, an American manufacturer of equipment for magicians based in Los Angeles, spent $120,000 building his own version of Kempelen's machine over a five-year period from 1984.[62] The machine uses the original chessboard, which was stored separately from the original Turk and was not destroyed in the fire. The first public display of Gaughan's Turk was in November 1989 at a history of magic conference. The machine was presented much as Kempelen presented the original, except that the opponent was replaced by a computer running a chess program.[63] That is a wonderful detail. I like the irony.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- hbosch 8y agoSuch a fascinating story. I’ll take the privilege of being the first one to add this comment to the thread: this is where the Mechanical Turk service gets its name.
- yumraj 8y agoThe first thing that comes to mind after reading this is the story about AI startups using humans to fake results. :)
- Theodores 8y agoThe Turk played against quite a few prominent people known for their intellect. Amongst those willing to take on the Turk were political leaders, e.g. Napoleon. In today's world I very much doubt our Western political leaders would know the rules of the game well enough to rise to the challenge. They certainly wouldn't have the patience or be queuing up to play. We might have brilliant computers able to defeat any human opponent at chess, however, I think we lost something along the way by not having leaders able to take on The Turk.
- pwaivers 8y agoYou think that Western world leaders wouldn't know the rules to chess? Trump may not know, but I would be bet everyone else does.
- HyperTalk2 8y agoWhat makes you think Trump doesn't know how to play chess?
- cdelsolar 8y agoOrange fan mad.
- glitchc 8y agoTrump: "I'd be soo good at chess, so good... I'd make the Turk concede at the start." - paraphrased from Dana Carvey
- Rebelgecko 8y agoI know people talk about him playing 5-D chess or whatever, but the only remark I've heard from him about high level chess was demonstrably false. He said that part of why America needs to be made great again is because there are no American "grand chess masters" (sic), when in fact there's nearly a hundred American grandmasters (putting the US at #2 in the world, which is about the best we've ever been by that metric). He has also released pictures of himself purportedly playing chess, except the board is in an impossible configuration.
- simen 8y agoSounds like typical anti-politician bullshit. Most adults have at least a passing familiarity with the rules of chess, I don't see any reason why world leaders would be any different. Bill Clinton was on his university's chess team. Obama is said to play chess, although he never played competitively. I suppose you don't count them as Western, but the Russians, of course, take chess extremely seriously. So seriously, in fact, that the new president of FIDE, Arkady Dvorkovich, was deputy prime minister of Russia until May of this year.
- doe88 8y agoEnlighting, I never realised what the eponym Amazon service meant until now.
- donjoe 8y agoThe German verb 'etwas türken' (~ to fake sth.) originates from The Turk mentioned in the article. https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Türken_(Verb) https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Türken_(Verb)