> <i>John Gaughan, an American manufacturer of equipment for magicians based in Los Angeles, spent $120,000 building his own version of Kempelen's machine over a five-year period from 1984.[62] The machine uses the original chessboard, which was stored separately from the original Turk and was not destroyed in the fire. The first public display of Gaughan's Turk was in November 1989 at a history of magic conference. The machine was presented much as Kempelen presented the original, except that the opponent was replaced by a computer running a chess program.[63]</i><p>That is a wonderful detail. I like the irony.
The German verb 'etwas türken' (~ to fake sth.) originates from The Turk mentioned in the article.<p><a href="https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Türken_(Verb)" rel="nofollow">https://de.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Türken_(Verb)</a>
Such a fascinating story. I’ll take the privilege of being the first one to add this comment to the thread: this is where the Mechanical Turk service gets its name.
The Turk played against quite a few prominent people known for their intellect. Amongst those willing to take on the Turk were political leaders, e.g. Napoleon.<p>In today's world I very much doubt our Western political leaders would know the rules of the game well enough to rise to the challenge. They certainly wouldn't have the patience or be queuing up to play.<p>We might have brilliant computers able to defeat any human opponent at chess, however, I think we lost something along the way by not having leaders able to take on The Turk.