(Automaton Chess-Player) | The first great "cabinet trick"

(Automaton Chess-Player)
Maelzel’s Tentoonstelling. Amsterdam: G.A. Diederichs en Zoon, [ca. 1810]

Letterpress broadside (247 x 185 mm). Decorative border, central vignette of "The Turk," text in Dutch; old folds, a few stray spots, two lines scored through with ink. Matted, framed, and glazed; not examined out of frame.

"Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen exhibited in 1769 the most famous example of a false automaton. The Baron introduced a slightly smaller than life-size figure identified as a Turk, who sat behind a table with a conventional chessboard on top. The Baron wound the mechanism, whose intricate wheels and gears were visible to spectators, and the figure then played the game of chess. The Turk eventually played thousands of games, against opponents that supposedly included Benjamin Franklin and Napoleon, and rarely lost. Heralded as a great thinking machine, the Turk was eventually exposed as an ingenious magic illusion, perhaps the first great 'cabinet trick'" (Exemplars).

In 1805, Johann Nepomuk Maelzel, an organ builder and musician, purchased the somewhat forgotten device from von Kempelen, eventually taking it to Paris, where he sold it to Eugène Beauharnais for a tidy profit. Maelzel then turned his attention to building an automatic trumpet player (also advertised here). The Turk was exhibited for decades before eventually being exposed as a hoax.

REFERENCE:
Exemplars, pp. 180–183

Condition Report:
Condition as described in catalogue entry.

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