Charles Babbage and the Turk

Over the next decade, Kempelen toured the chess playing machine through Europe, defeating some of the most formidable minds of the time, including Benjamin Franklin and Frederick the Great. According to Tom Standage, who has written an extensive history of the Turk, Babbage suspected that the automaton was not “intelligent,” but merely an elaborate hoax, concealing a person who was, somehow, controlling the Turk’s moves from the inside. While there is no technological link between the Turk and Babbage’s Engine, the possibility of machine intelligence embodied by von Kempelen’s hoax seems to have inspired Babbage to think about machines in entirely new ways.

Source: spectrum.ieee.org