PHIL SLADE MIND GAMES
In 1770, at a lavish party in a Viennese parlour, the inventor Wolfgang von Kempelen unveiled his latest invention with a flair that Steve Jobs would have been proud of. To the wonderment of the audience, he revealed a large wooden box with a chessboard on top that he described as the world's first chess-playing robot. He then opened the front of the box to reveal all manner of cogs, pulleys and intricate machinery – it was very impressive. In particular whenautomatically. The robot understood all the rules and could recognise when its opponent made a mistake or an illegal move. Von Kempelen called his chess robot the Mechanical Turk.
