I.

Automata have played an important part in the magic of ancient temples, and in the sÉances of mediÆval sorcerers. Who has not read of the famous “Brazen Head,” constructed by Friar Bacon, and the wonderful machines of Albertus Magnus? Modern conjurers have introduced automata into their entertainments with great effect, as witness Pinetti’s “Wise Little Turk,” Kempelen’s “Chess Player,” Houdin’s “Pastry Cook of the Palais Royal,” Kellar’s “Hindoo Clock,” Maskelyne’s “Psycho,” etc. But these automata have been such in name only, the motive power usually being furnished by the conjurer’s alter ego, or concealed assistant.

The so-called automaton Chess Player is enveloped with a halo of romance. It had a remarkable history. It was constructed in the year 1769 by the Baron von Kempelen, a Hungarian nobleman and mechanician, and exhibited by him at the leading courts of Europe. The Empress Maria Theresa of Austria played a game with it. In 1783 it was brought to Paris and shown at the CafÉ de la Regence, the rendezvous of chess lovers and experts, after which it was taken to London. Kempelen died on the 26th of March, 1804, and his son sold the Chess Player to J. N. Maelzel, musician, inventor and mechanician, who was born at Ratisbon, Bavaria, in 1772. His father was a celebrated organ-builder. {108}

Maelzel was the inventor of the Metronome (1815), a piece of mechanism known to all instructors of music: the automaton Trumpeter (1808), and the Pan-Harmonicum (1805). He had a strange career as the exhibitor of the Chess Player. After showing the automaton in various cities of Europe, Maelzel sold it to Napoleon’s step-son, EugÈne Beauharnais, the Viceroy of the Kingdom of Italy. But the old love of “adventurous travel with the Turbaned Turk” took possession of him, and he succeeded in buying back the Chess Player from its royal owner. He went to Paris with it in 1817 and 1818, afterwards to London, meeting everywhere with success. In 1826 he brought it to America. The Chess Player excited the greatest interest throughout the United States. Noted chess experts did their best to defeat it, but rarely succeeded.

Now for a description of the automaton.

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.

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.

Occasionally, Schlumberger would over-indulge in wine, and as a result would be beaten, while acting as the motive power of the Turk. “On one occasion,” says Professor Allen, “just as Maelzel was bringing the Turk out from behind the curtain, a strange noise was heard to proceed from his interior organization, something between a rattle, a cough, and a sneeze. Maelzel pushed back his ally in evident alarm, but presently brought him forward again, and went on with the exhibition as if nothing had happened.” {111}

Schlumberger not only acted as confederate, but served his employer as secretary and clerk.

Edgar Allen Poe, who wrote an exposÉ of the automaton when it visited Richmond, remarked: “There is a man, Schlumberger, who attends him (Maelzel) wherever he goes, but who has no ostensible occupation other than that of assisting in packing and unpacking of the automaton. Whether he professes to play chess or not, we are not informed. It is quite certain, however, that he is never to be seen during the exhibition of the Chess Player, although frequently visible just before and after the exhibition. Moreover, some years ago Maelzel visited Richmond with his automaton. Schlumberger was suddenly taken ill, and during his illness there was no exhibition of the Chess Player. These facts are well known to many of our citizens. The reason assigned for the suspension of the Chess Player’s performances was not the illness of Schlumberger. The inferences from all this we leave, without further comment, to the reader.”

Edgar Allen Poe, the apostle of mystery, certainly hit the nail on the head here, and solved the problem of the automaton.

The Chess Player had the honor of defeating Napoleon the Great—“the Victor in a hundred battles.” This was in the year 1809, when Maelzel, by virtue of his office as Mechanician to the Court of Austria, was occupying some portion of the Palace of SchÖnbrunn, “when Napoleon chose to make the same building his headquarters during the Wagram campaign.” A man by the name of Allgaier was the concealed assistant on this occasion. Napoleon was better versed in the art of manoeuvring human kings, queens, prelates and pawns on the great chess-boards of diplomacy and battle than moving ivory chessmen on a painted table-top.

Maelzel, in addition to the Chess Player, exhibited his own inventions, which were really automatons, also the famous panorama, “The Burning of Moscow.” After a splendid tour throughout the States, he went to Havana, Cuba, where poor Schlumberger died of yellow fever. On the return trip Maelzel himself died, and was buried at sea. This was in 1838.

The famous Turk, with other of Maelzel’s effects, was sold {112} at public auction in Philadelphia. The automaton was bought by Dr. J. K. Mitchell, reconstructed, and privately exhibited by him for the amusement of his friends. Finally it was deposited in the Chinese Museum, where it remained for fourteen years, with the dust accumulating upon it. Here the Chess Player rested from his labors, a superannuated, broken down pensioner, dreaming, if automatons can dream, of his past adventures, until the year 1854. On July 5 of that year a great fire destroyed the Museum, and the Turbaned Turk was burnt to ashes. Better such a fate than rotting to pieces in the cellar of some old warehouse, forgotten and abandoned.

Robert-Houdin, in his autobiography, tells a most romantic story about the Chess Player, the accuracy of which has been seriously doubted. He also makes several errors concerning its career and that of Maelzel. R. Shelton Mackenzie, who translated Houdin’s life (1859), calls attention to these mistakes, in his preface to that work. “This remarkable piece of mechanism was constructed in 1769, and not in 1796; it was the Empress Maria-Theresa of Austria who played with it, and not Catherine II of Russia. M. Maelzel’s death was in 1838, on the voyage from Cuba to the United States, and not, as M. Houdin says, on his return to France; and the automaton, so far from being taken back to France, was sold at auction here [Philadelphia], where it was consumed in the great fire of July 5, 1854.”

I believe that the true history of the Chess Player is related by Prof. George Allen, of the University of Pennsylvania, in Fiske’s Book of the first American Chess Congress, N. Y., 1859, pp. 420–484.