Wolfgang von Kempelen

Who was Wolfgang von Kempelen?

Johann Wolfgang Ritter von Kempelen de Pázmánd was an author and inventor, known for his chess-playing "automaton" hoax The Turk and for his speaking machine.

Von Kempelen was born in Pressburg, then part of the Kingdom of Hungary within the Habsburg Empire, into a German-speaking family; his father was Engelbert Kempelen, his mother was Ágnes Mohai. The Kempelen family had settled in Pressburg in 1640. and was supposedly of Irish ancestry, even thought the name Kempelen itself is Hungarian.

Von Kempelen studied law and philosophy in Pressburg, and then in Győr, Vienna and Rome, but mathematics and physics also interested him. He spoke German, Hungarian, Latin, French, Italian, and later also English. He started to work as a clerk in Vienna.

Von Kempelen was most famous for his construction of The Turk, a chess-playing automaton presented to Maria Theresa of Austria in 1770. The machine consisted of a life-sized model of a human head and torso, dressed in Turkish robes and a turban, seated behind a large cabinet on top of which a chessboard was placed. The machine appeared to be able to play a strong game of chess against a human opponent, but was in fact merely an elaborate simulation of mechanical automation: a human chess master concealed inside the cabinet puppeteered the Turk from below by means of a series of levers. With a skilled operator, the Turk won most of the games played during its demonstrations around Europe and the Americas for nearly 84 years, playing and defeating many challengers including statesmen such as Napoleon Bonaparte and Benjamin Franklin.