The Turk: The Life and Times of the Famous Eighteenth-Century Chess Playing Machine. . - Political booknotes: Turkish delight - book review

Washington Monthly, April, 2002 by Justin Peters

WHEN DEEP BLUE, IBM's monolithic chess-playing computer, faced grandmaster Garry Kasparov in a best-of-six match in 1997, breathless pundits followed the action like it was the Showdown at the A.I. Corral. Warning against "the potential usurpation of mankind by its own technology," Time anointed Kasparov "the latest standard bearer in humanity's war against our own obsolescence." Kasparov had played and beaten Deep Blue once before, and he confidently predicted another win this second time around. Yet, unthinkably, Deep Blue emerged victorious--and as the media pondered the ramifications, Kasparov cried foul play. Unable or unwilling to believe that he had been bested by a computer, Kasparov whined to The New York Times that he had "met something that I couldn't explain. I have to imagine human interference, or I want an explanation."

Sour grapes aside, Kasparov's defeat, to many people, seemed like just another way in which human achievement was being overtaken by cool mechanical efficiency. Yet few people realized that this sense of electronic ennui had its antecedent 200 years prior, when a chess-playing robot known as "the Turk" confounded observers throughout Europe and America. In his intriguing new book The Turk: The Life and Times of the Famous Eighteenth-Century Chess Playing Machine, Tom Standage traces the Turk's history and defines its legacy. Standage, the technology correspondent for The Economist, has written a fast-paced, entertaining techno-history that, while overshooting its mark a few times, succeeds on the whole.

The Turk, designed at the behest of Holy Roman empress Maria Theresa, was the most famous in a series of automata that captivated kings and savants across the Continent during the 18th and 19th centuries. Built to perform a wide range of activities--from playing a trumpet to simulating the digestive system of a duck--these automata, powered by intricate systems of gears and camshafts, were miracles of craftsmanship and mechanical skill.

Yet the Turk was unique in the robotic ranks because it appeared capable of rational, independent thought. It consisted of a figure clad in a turban and flowing, "Turkish-style" robes, seated in front of a large chest, on top of which was a chessboard. When challenged to a game, the machine's operator would wind a key in the side of the chest, and, with a whirl of gears, the Turk would grab its piece and make the first move. The Turk easily won most of the games it played. If its opponent made a false move, the machine would shake its head and return the offending piece to its starting position; if the false move was made again, it would sweep its arm across the table, scattering the pieces and ending the game.

The Turk was an instant success, and word of its prowess quickly spread across Europe. During exhibitions, people crowded into lecture halls to see the storied machine and try to find out just how it worked. Most people apparently harbored no illusions that the Turk was a genuine automaton, and attended the shows in order to discover by what sleight-of-hand the operator was controlling the machine. The Turk drew crowds in Europe for 40 years--and when Europe grew tired of the machine, its operator packed it off to America, where a whole new world waited to discover its wonders.

During the Turk's travels, it came into contact with several notable historical figures, and Standage is quick to describe the ways in which these people's experiences with the Turk impacted their lives. Some of these stories work and some of them don't. It's believable when Standage claims that Edgar Allan Poe's unique writing style was first developed in an expose Poe wrote about the Turk. But when he attributes the idea for something like Charles Babbage's Difference Engine, a mechanical ancestor of the modern computer, to the Turk's influence on young Babbage's mind, it smacks of ill-considered authorial postulate rather than credible research.

All in all, it's an interesting story. The book reads like a slightly insane travelogue, populated by carnies, charlatans, and dreamers, all seeking to cash in on the automaton craze in one way or another. Standage is at his best in describing the eras various automata and the characters that exhibited them. Less convincing is his assertion that these automata served as the vanguard of a new industrial age.

Standage, who also authored 1999's The Victorian Internet, specializes in linking the technologies of the past with the discoveries of the present. And, as in his previous book, the connections he makes, while novel, are not always justified. Standage theorizes that these marvelous machines were the true progenitors of the Industrial Revolution: "At the intersection between entertainment, technology, and commerce, automata allowed new ideas to flow from one field to another and acted as a catalyst for further innovation." Now, some would say that population growth, mobility of labor, and the expansion of capital were the main factors behind the Industrial Revolution. But, hey, if Standage wants to attribute it to chess-playing robots, that's his prerogative.