it was rumored to be a few different people over the course of its touring, mostly members of a well known chess cafe in Paris. it's not that remarkable that the operators beat their opponents, as they played mostly famous people whose reputation exceeded their actual skill at the game, at least when pitted against the masters who actually frequented chess cafes and were active in the advancement of the game
@@zhuljensprobably did an NDA, and I’m certain the inventor of the Turk compensated their players for having to sit in such a small compartment for so long while concentrating on the game above them from below.
I feel like I've watched a horror movie with a similar plot as to this, but I can't remember haha. Not about The Turk, but something about replacing people like that.
@@Carnifier it reminds me of an old netflix series with horror stories where an ice cream truck would go around and replace its owner every 30 years with a new kid in the neighborhood
... Why exactly? He could see what was happening. It's just a normal game of chess. Only difficult part might have been grabbing the pieces with the robot arm, but I don't think that requires being "insanely talented". Edit: Literally, watch the video. Dude's hunched over sitting in a box by his own choice, looking at a replica board of exactly what is happening over his head, which he has a full 30 seconds to situate based on the two moving magnets. Besides operating the possibly janky "robot arm", there is nothing impressive going on that's any different from if dude had not been a scammer and played the game normally. He's impressive at chess, but there is nothing impressive about this scam. It does not require any insane talent besides being good enough at chess.
For the 1700s it’s still really impressive. Even being able to have movement like that would be really difficult and trying to win in there would be a real challenge
Ive heard that napoleon played against the turk and kept trying to do some illegal move, the turk corrected him many times, but the operator got so frustrated that he leaped out of the box to scold napoleon😂
If that's true, this is probably the only way one could have beaten a madman or person with great influence like Napoleon in chess--otherwise, the winner would've been killed.
@@badmaniakyeah, pretty easy to build if you have access to the internet alongside an education gotten in the modern day. This was from the 1700's when mechanical engineering was very much in it's infancy.
The least introverted chess master I don’t know why people were trying to correct me when I was speaking most introverted from experience but here you go. Hope you’re happy.
@@Metal_HorrorBro doesn’t know anything about engineering 💀 there’s a reason why “smaller” machines are far more complicated and intricate than giant, static structures
There's a little bit of clever psychology there as well. There's the obvious novelty of the robot (which is akin to a "magic trick") but also the (at the time) fantasy of becoming invisible, being able to do what you wanted to do without reprisal. Sure he was just beating folks at chess, but it's what he wanted to do.
The other thing is he gets to see everyones chess moves. Back then they kept them like secrets and wouldn't necessarily play just anyone with specific plays. This was back before engines could give best moves. The robot let him learn secrets to use against future opponents.
Everyone's talking about the build of the machine but nobody's gonna talk about how there was a bad ass chess player beating people all over the world.
not only was this guy insanely good at chess, he also had to be able to simultaneously remember where and when and what pieces moved, the level of intelligence this guy had must have been insane
He has a chess board in the box and moves the opponent pieces on his board similar to how the op moves. He technically doesn't need to remember anything because he has 30 seconds to move 1 piece.
the reason why the chessplayer sat on a sliding chair rather than remaining in place: when the machine's doors were opened, it exposed fake clockwork and machinery to delude the audiences into thinking it was a real machine - the operator slid about to hide from view and maintain the illusion
@@sheogorathprinceofmadness2223 it was simpler times. the person inside moves forward. they open first compartment. to show all the way through the machine. they close it and the person slides back. they open the next compartment and it convinces the people that no one could possibly be inside. search the subject on RU-vid and find a longer video. there are a number of vids that go very in depth about the mechanism.
They never figured it out at the time i belive the creator (who was also the original chess master) passed it down to his son when he passed and he eventually revealed the blueprint that said how it worked
Imagine being a maid or servant in a French castle and Napoleon does an illegal move and this horrifying hexed wooden doll just yeets everything aside like a vengeful deity. Must’ve really spooked those poor people lol
@@NinjaTyler If no one "ever" figured it out, then we still wouldn't know. Nobody figured it out until he revealed it at his death. The joke is pointing out the contradiction between the two statements, not confusion over whether it was figured out or not.
@@Pehz63 Correct, but to be fair to @NinjaTyler, he was saying no one ever "figured it out." Meaning it had to be revealed by the owner, and it wasn't logically deduced by observation and/or investigation. It really comes down to semantics, which is why I chose not to engage. But yes, it was a joke. I'm glad someone had a good enough sense of humor to point this out.
@@quixotichippie Actually introversion is a personality trait, not a diagnosable condition like social anxiety disorder. And perhaps most importantly, introversion does not interfere with day-to-day functioning or cause marked distress, whereas social anxiety absolutely does.
@@micahphilson Revelation 3:20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me. HEY THERE 🤗 JESUS IS CALLING YOU TODAY. Turn away from your sins, confess, forsake them and live the victorious life. God bless. Revelation 22:12-14 And, behold, I come quickly; and my reward is with me, to give every man according as his work shall be. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last. Blessed are they that do his commandments, that they may have right to the tree of life, and may enter in through the gates into the city.
"Ah, haha, we thought it was a robot but it was just a normal human master engineer and unbeatable chess master traveling around beating the masters around the world! 80 years? Ah, so it was just a whole group of unkown chess god engineers. Perfectly normal. That explains it. Nothing to see here."
"facing the best chess players and beating them all" "played thousands of games and won almost all of them" Beating every player. Won almost every game. Every player / Most games Y'all need to work on your English comprehension 😂
@@JosueHernandez-nu5cp This works, right up until someone plays against the robot more than once. I’d imagine that back then, you’d have players lining up to play against this thing over and over again, much like how when arcades first opened people would replay the same games over and over again. Your line of thinking only works if we assume that every single game involved a new player, with zero repetition. The moment you allow for repetition,the same player playing more than once, then you can in fact have beaten every single player, without having won every single game.
@@thatmoththoth ah thank you. I think I sort of remember it but I wasn't sure if I was thinking of the right thing. I'll make sure not to skip it on my relisten :)
I haven't heard this story in ages but I think there were at least two operators over the years. That's two men who chose to hide their identity full time just to troll the world. Respect
You left out the most important thing: the Mechanical Turk was built by a Hungarian inventor, architect, poet and overall polyhistor, Kempelen Farkas. Other than the Turk, he built a mechanical human "mouth" that could speak if you blew air into it with bellows; he also built proto-steam turbines, aqueducts, typewriters for blind people and a ton of other things. Look him up, the guy was a real life steampunk/clockwork mastermind. I'm proud to share my Hungarian nationality with him.
This is still impressive tbh. The amount of memory involved would be insane, and the precision of the mechanisms inside the puppet needed to be top-notch to ensure it can actually grab things
@@alx_slav4068Well the one controlling the robot was a chess master and it wasnt just professional chess players who played but also other people and royalty
Funfact: It was invented by Farkas Kempelen, a Hungarian inventor who had a really good relationship with the Habsburg family and queen Maria Theresa. When the whole Austrian court couldn't beat the robot, it went viral quickly in the whole of Europe 😂
@@thesenate8268i suppose it could be because hungary was under ottoman rule in 17th century and the robot shown depicts the most common character that comes to mind when thought of ottomans and the ottoman empire is mostly associated with the turkish identity which is a bit false but it is what comes to mind.
This is incredibly impressive to me. Not only was the person kicking butt in chess, but they were doing it by reading the game board upside down and using only visual cues from that mechanism.
@@4.0.4 true, however it will still take awhile to reformat the infrastructure of mechanical Turk and AI before the AI alternatives becomes more economic for the businesses using Turk
@@4.0.4 Actually, it’s often used to collect data for training AI. Lots of AI development still needs large-scale data collection, and labeling images with humans or stuff like that can be better. It can also be used to gain statistics like how well humans vs. AI accomplish tasks like that. Nowadays, people are also trying to use unlabeled datasets to train machine learning models (“transfer learning”), but you still need some labeled data at the end. If you’ve ever done captchas that ask you to identify traffic lights or cars in an image, that’s also used for training data for self driving cars.
That happened one time and you’ll never guess who the Turk was playing when it did….. Napoleon Bonaparte Napoleon, not knowing the secret but wanting to have fun with the “robot” attempted to play white, which only the Turk could play. After the Turk tried to reset the pieces when Napoleon played them, he (the robot) swiped them all off the board in annoyance. Apparently Napoleon thought it was hilarious, then played a real game, where he lost in about five minutes
@@TheDeadman419 The Chess Trololo did not like that move. Napolien used Laugh. It wasn't effective, but still made a better story than most movies in the 2020's.
Actually, the original Turk (which was destroyed in a fire if memory serves) smoked a pipe - in reality, serving as a chimney to keep the smoke from the candles away from the operator and so that they could see
The chessmasters who secretly operated it included Johann Allgaier, Boncourt, Aaron Alexandre, William Lewis, Jacques Mouret, and William Schlumberger, but the operators within the mechanism during Kempelen's original tour remain unknown. Wikipedia!
@@PS-pp7kn...I read that, too while trying to find out why this genius inventor cosplayed his "humanoid" mechanical construction as a zeitgeistappropriate stereotypical (?) Turk...hmmmmm I got curious...we have produced various geniuses over centuries, yet I never heard of a chessprodigy... bizarre why this choice? I was socialized primarily in Frankfurt a/M, Germany - believe it or not, in 20+ yrs I've never heard this verb 😅...this is the very first x! Do I feel that term as offensive? Absolutely not, not even remotely...hahaha...if I'd be thin-skinned how could I survive in the USA where the term *turkey* is colloquially used derogatory? Apropos there's another hypothesis: The term "türken" (Trick, tricksen) evolved from *truquer* (French). *truquer* heißt heute fälschen (Wein: panschen, Bilanzen: frisieren, Theater: whenever hidden machines were used & other tricks to create artsy & surprising effects on stage) In cinematography we coined this as special effects. "Trickaufnahme" in French even today is called *le trucage*. ( *le truc* : Bereich Theater: Maschine zu Verwandlungen, Langenscheidt, Sachs-Villate, 29. Auflage) The term *truquer* may have been adopted from the military jargon. "Special effects" at maneuver training are coined "türken" & *getürkt* in the military. Ergo, the German "türken" is simply the French "truquer" w/ place change of the "r" (r-Metathese), thus *trük-en* became *türk-en*. Why the "r-place change happened is anyone's guess. My guess the term "trücken" was probably visually & phonetically too similar to "drücken". While writing this comment I realized it's actually erroneous to assume "türken" is related to 🇹🇷...unless one belongs to the über-political correct &/or the (new) woke (hopefully) minority that is, regardless of nationality, the majority needs professional help IMO. Now, that I know about the existence of this word & its potential derogatory use, I'd suggest to avoid or at least limit the use of that term in the presence of "average" Turks (similar to the "N"-word here in the USA)...unfortunately too many of my landsmen (& -women) act impulsive first, & think later or chose to go w/ the flow of the loudest, usually biased opinion instead figuring out "the truth" for themselves. I dare say my fellow Turks do not know that "türken" means simply "tricksen/getrickst" & has no connection w/ his/her nationality whatsoever except for the spelling perhaps. In my preteens I chose & internalized the very German brutal straightforward honesty when I grew up in Germany & dropped the Turkish sweet talk rituals which are utterly time consuming imo. I'd say, unless an "average" Turk would specifically asks one about the definition of "getürkt" etc., one should diplomatically withdraw from any explanation attempt especially when one is not 100% Turkish, e.g. born & raised in 🇹🇷 that is. 50% Turkish doesn't count, neither does 200% (hahaha) Turkish but socialized in foreign countries, even today in 2024 we are still seen more like traitors than bridges 😅 since most of us do not share the extreme blind patriotism but identify more as global citizen.
Unsurprisingly it lost against most of the best chess players. It was a novelty that was primarily used against famous people and rich people. Although it also made money from the public via admission prices as well.
Its like amazons grocery store walk out program which was just people on cams watching and billing whoever was there manually not the machine. Why even try this so dumb.
@@SammyBoyoNo you wouldn’t; You have your own board and set of pieces inside, and can replicate each move as your opponent makes it, meaning you can always keep track of which piece is where.
Y'know, If you ever watched doctor who (more specific the seasons featuring the 11th doctor) the you'd have seen that, into one of the episodes, the group ventures a idealized future were Cyborgs (a somewhat fictional race composed of assimilated humans and aliens into a web of metalic beings unable to feel emotions) were almost instinct, where they see a salvaged Cyborg carcass that is able to play and win chess games even without robot/humanoid mechanisms to make itself operate normaly, the trick on that scene is the exact same operated by the Turk, but the Cyborg carcass was controles via a remote control that the guy inside the tablet used.
@@bipolarminddroppings - True indeed, though I still think it's crazy to think that no one at that time figured it out. Just a bit of sensationalising I think
@@Siberius- If people had figured it out, then they would have stopped playing against it since it's just a person hiding in a box. At least for 90 years, people did not figure it out.,
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The mechanism of the figure and the way the master had to be at the top of his chess game while simultaneously interpreting and memorizing the screws that came down is wild.
What's wild is that people 200 hundred years after believe a fake story like XVIII century peasants... the dude who made the fake news was called Wolfgang von Kempelen
Where are you people getting that the person inside has to memorize the moves? Did you even watch the video? They have their own chessboard in front of them, replicating the game going on above them. It isn't that hard.
