The celebrated automaton Chess Player will be well remembered. The history of this wonderful piece of mechanism is as follows: M. Wolfgang de Kempelen, a Hungarian gentleman, devoted himself from an early age to the study of mechanics. In 1769 he paid a visit to Vienna on business of his office of Aulic Counsellor to the Royal Chamber of the domains of the Emperor of Germany in Hungary. He received an invitation from the Empress Maria Theresa to be present at certain magnetical experiments exhibited by a French gentleman of the name of Pelletier. While in conversation with the Empress during its exhibition, Mons. Kempelen asserted that he felt himself competent to construct a piece of mechanism far more surprising than those which they were witnessing. The Empress took him at his word, and bound him to keep or attempt to keep his promise. He kept it, and in six months he produced the famous Chess Player. When shown in Vienna, it caused the greatest excitement and admiration. It was the talk of society. The inventor, in spite of its success, persistently refused to exhibit it in public. He put it aside, and even took it to pieces, and for several years it was not used.
It was not until the visit of the Grand Duke Paul of Russia, and his consort, to the Court of Vienna, that the chess player was again brought to light, and exhibited by the wish of the Empress. The royal visitors were so delighted with its marvellous performance that they urged Kempelen to permit its public exhibition. He complied, and it was shown in various parts of Germany and France, and in 1785 it was brought to England. When Kempelen died, about 1803, the figure was sold by his son to Mons. Marlzel, and in 1819 that gentleman brought it again to the metropolis. That figure, exhibited some time ago in the Crystal Palace, was an improvement upon Kempelen’s Chess Player.
The following is a description of the original Chess Player: The room in which it was exhibited had an inner apartment, within which appeared the figure of a Turk of the natural size, sitting behind a chest 3½ ft. 2 in. breadth and 2½ ft. in height. To this was attached the wooden shelf on which the figure sat. The chest was movable on casters, and could be moved to any part of the room. On its top, in the centre of the chest, was an immovable chessboard, upon which the eyes of the figure were always fixed. Its right hand and arm were extended on the chest, while the left, slightly raised, held a long pipe. Two doors in front and two doors in the back of the chest were opened, and a drawer in the bottom of it, containing the chess-men and a cushion whereon to place the arm of the automaton, was pulled out. Two smaller doors were also opened in the body of the figure, and a lighted candle was held within the openings thus displayed. This was repeated at the conclusion of the game, if the spectators so wished. The chest appeared divided by a partition into two unequal chambers, that on the right being the narrowest, and occupying one third of the whole. It was full of small wheels, and cylinders and levers. That to the left contained wheels, barrels with springs, and two quadrants placed horizontally. The door and drawer having been closed, the exhibitor wound up the works with a key inserted in a small opening in the side of the chest, placed a cushion beneath the arm of the figure, and then challenged any one of the company present to play a game with it. It was observed that in playing the automaton always selected the white pieces, and had the first move. Owing to a curious mistake of the inventor, the figure moved the men with his left hand. The error, when found out, could not afterward be rectified. Its hands and fingers opened, and then grasped a piece, which it conveyed to the proper square. In taking a piece, the same motion was made by the arm and hand as before; it, however, conveyed the piece off the board, and then placed its own piece upon the vacant square. While and after his opponent made a move, the figure paused for a few moments as though contemplating its own. It intimated with a nod of the head when it gave check to the king. During the time the arm was in motion, a low sound of clockwork running down was distinctly heard. The works were wound up at intervals by the exhibitor, who otherwise did nothing but walk up and down the room. As we find that the automaton both lost and won—in Kempelen’s time it very seldom lost—and that each game was different to the others, it necessarily follows that these phenomena are inconsistent with the sole effects of mechanism. Various conjectures have been offered as to the mode of communication between the figure and the intelligence which directed it. A plausible and probable explanation was given in 1821 in a pamphlet called, “An Attempt to Analyze the Automaton Chess Player.” In this brochure it is shown that in spite of the apparent display of the interior of the chest and the figure, there yet was ample space left unopened for the concealment of a person of ordinary size behind a false back to the narrowest division only. This is shown in the accompanying illustrations.
The basis for this elucidation of what was a profound mystery to the many was as follows:
The machinery was ostentatiously displayed when at rest; but carefully secluded from view while in motion. By this means the spectator could not form any judgment as to whether the machinery was in any way connected with the automaton. There never was any variation in the method of opening the several doors. When winding up the clockwork, the key always made a certain number of revolutions, whether the motions of the figure, owing to the exigencies of the game, were more varied or protracted than usual. It was noticed that sixty-three moves were at one time made without the machinery being wound up, while at another time the machinery was wound up with the intervention of a single move. Whether or not the action of the automaton was produced by the agency of a concealed person I do not care to pronounce, but the illustration given proves clearly, I think, that it might have been so produced. Mons. Kempelen is said to have invented a still more extraordinary exhibition of his great mechanical genius—namely, a speaking automaton. How this figure became possessed of a voice, I will show in another chapter.
CHAPTER II.
Kempelen.
Kempelen’s Speaking Machine has been thus described. It was of simple structure, and consisted only of five parts—viz., the reed, representing the human glottis; an air-chest, with internal valves; the bellows or lungs; a mouth with its appurtenances, and nostrils formed to resemble those of the human body. The reed was not cylindrical, but formed to imitate the reed of a bagpipe drone. The hollow portion, however, was square, and the tongue of the reed, which vibrated, consisted of a thin ivory slip resting upon it horizontally. This hollow tube was inserted into the chest, and the discharge of air occasioning a vibration of the ivory, the requisite sound was produced. To soften its vibration, the part supporting the slip was covered with leather, and a movable spring shifting along the upper side of the slip brought the sound of the reed to the proper pitch. The sound was more acute as the spring was moved forward to the outer extremity, because the vibrations then became quicker, and when shifted farther from the anterior extremity, the sound became more grave, as the vibrations were then slower. A slight curvature of the ivory slip arose from the pressure of the spring, which was enough for the object desired. One end of the air-chest, which was of an oblong figure, received this voice-pipe, containing the reed; and into the opposite end was inserted the mouth of the bellows. Both the apertures were guarded by leather, to prevent unnecessary waste of air: two smaller air-chests were then put into it, each having a valve above closed by the pressure of a spring, and each having a round aperture adapted to receive through the side of the large air-chest a tin funnel, and a round wooden tube for producing hissing sounds—as, s, z, sch, j. The voice-pipe was placed in the large air-chest, so as to be between the smaller air-chests. When all these parts were fitted to the air-chest, the operation of one lever raising the valve of the first smaller chest connected with the tin funnel produced the sound s; while the operation of another, raising the valve of the second smaller chest connected with the wooden tube, produced the sound of sch. But it is proper further to explain that instead of being a simple tunnel, it was, in fact, a tin box, with a square hole in the outer end, nearly covered by a slip of pasteboard; and the wooden tube was merely the mouth-piece of a common flute, closed at the lower extremity, and with the air-hole modified and contracted: the letter r was produced by the rapid vibration of the ivory slip, owing to a strong discharge of air.