mechanickal ducks u.s.w.

[Burns, Erik]

foax:
haven't seen this mentioned on the list; if you've been through it, accept
my apologies.
otherwise, could be of interest in re things mechanickal & S.H.R.O.U.D.like.
etb

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0802713912/qid=1018861586/sr=8-8/ref=
sr_8_67_8/104-7912338-3509550

(review below from The Wall Street Journal)

Mysterious Automaton

THE TURK
By Tom Standage

The question engaged everyone from Charles Babbage to Edgar Allan Poe: How
did it work? Wolfgang von Kempelen's automaton was able to play chess with
people -- and almost always beat them. As told in Tom Standage's marvelous
"The Turk" (Walker, 272 pages, $24), this life-size mannequin attired in
Eastern costume, complete with turban, stunned viewers when first
demonstrated at the Austrian court in 1770.

Seated at a cabinet with a chessboard on top, it responded to the moves of
its adversaries by moving its pieces. It could also roll its eyes, wink and
say "check" when needed. After Napoleon captured Vienna in 1809, he
challenged the Turk to a game. By then it was owned by musician-impresario
Johann Nepomuk Maelzel, who had refined its workings. The French emperor
tried three illegal moves, and the Turk knocked all the pieces onto the
floor. Napoleon was delighted.

What a mystery it was! Before each performance the interior of the cabinet
was exposed, uncovering elaborate machinery. It was then turned around so
that the audience could look into the back, too, and see that no one was
hidden inside. Finally, Kempelen wound it up and stepped back while the Turk
made mincemeat of its human opponents.

Mr. Standage, a technology correspondent for the Economist, conveys the 18th
century's fascination with automatons, from man-made ducks that could flap
their wings, eat grain and then excrete it to entire miniature orchestras
playing music commissioned from Beethoven. He also shows how the ingenuity
lavished on these toys led to more useful discoveries and how the Turk was
the forerunner of IBM's "Deep Blue," the computer that played and beat Garry
Kasparov.

So was the Turk a pure machine or not, you ask? As Maelzel responded to
Poe's direct question: "I will say nothing about it."

-- Stuart Ferguson

Updated April 12, 2002