The audience was introduced into a large room, at one end of which hung crimson curtains. These curtains being drawn aside, Maelzel rolled forward a box on castors. Behind the box or {109} table, which was two feet and a half high, three feet and a half long, and two feet wide, was seated cross-legged, the figure of a Turk. The chair on which the figure was affixed was permanently attached to the box. At the top of the box was a chess-board. The figure had its eyes fixed intently upon this board, its right hand and arm being extended towards the board, its left, which was somewhat raised, holding a long pipe.
Four doors, two in front, and two in the rear of the box, were opened, and a lighted candle thrust into the cavities. Nothing was to be seen except cog wheels, levers, and intricate machinery. A long drawer, which contained the chessmen and a cushion, was pulled out. Two doors in the Turk’s body were thrown open, and the candle held inside, to satisfy the spectators that nothing but machinery was contained therein.
Maelzel wound up the automaton with a large key, took away the pipe, and placed the cushion under the arm of the figure. Curious to relate the automaton played with its left hand. In Von Kempelen’s day, the person selected to play with the figure, sat at the same chess-board with it, but Maelzel altered this. A rope separated the machine from the audience, and the player sat at a small table, provided with a chess-board, some ten or twelve feet away from the Turk.
The automaton invariably chose the white chess-men, and made the first move, its fingers opening as the hand was extended towards the board, and the piece picked up and removed to its proper square.
When his antagonist had made his move, the automaton paused and appeared to study the game, before proceeding further. It nodded its head to indicate check to the king. If a false move was made by its opponent, it rapped on the table, and replaced the piece, claiming the move for itself. Maelzel, acting for the human player, repeated his move on the chess-board of the Turk, and when the latter moved, made the corresponding move on the board of the challenger. The whirring of machinery was heard during the progress of the game, but this was simply a blind. It subserved two purposes: first, to induce the spectators to believe that the automaton was really operated by ingenious mechanism, {110} second, to disguise the noise made by the concealed confederate as he shifted himself from one compartment to the other, as the various doors were opened and shut in succession. No machine could possibly be constructed to imitate the human mind when engaged in playing chess, or any other mental operation where the indeterminate enters and which requires knowledge and reflection. But the majority of people who saw the automaton did not realize this fact, and pronounced it a pure machine.
Signor Blitz, the conjurer, who was intimate with Maelzel, having frequently given entertainments in conjunction with him, was possessed of the secret of the Turk. In his memoirs, he says: “The Chess Player was ingeniously constructed—a perfect counterpart of a magician’s trick-table with a variety of partitions and doors, which, while they removed every possible appearance of deception, only produced greater mystery, and provided more security to the invisible player. The drawers and closets were so arranged as to enable him to change his position according to circumstances: at one moment he would be in this compartment; the next in that; then in the body of the Turk.”
He says this concealed assistant was named Schlumberger.
This explanation is verified by Professor Allen,[20] who was very intimate with Maelzel.
[20] Fiske’s Book of the First American Chess Congress, New York, 1859. Pp. 420–484.
William Schlumberger was a native of Alsace, a remarkable chess expert and linguist. Maelzel picked him up in the Café de la Regence, Paris, where he eked out a meagre living as a teacher of chess.