A Good Old, Great Old Scam

Behold a miniature model of “The Turk,” the world’s first and most famous chess-playing automaton. The full-size original was destroyed in a museum fire later in the 19th century. It once played a game against Napoleon Bonaparte and wiped up the board with him

The cool thing about The Turk is that it was a hoax. There was a guy inside! On the left you can see a small cabinet full of gears and such: that was only for show. The larger compartment held a human chess player who was better than Napoleon.

And everybody believed it, of course!

Just like they believe in Global Warming and the campus rape culture nowadays.

 

6 comments on “A Good Old, Great Old Scam

  1. I’m sure Napoleon would have been rather annoyed if he’d found out 😀
    Have you ever seen The Writer automaton? It’s amazing! It isn’t a hoax; it has a ton of miniaturized mechanisms that all work flawlessly together; and not only that, but it can also be programmed to write whatever you want it to (if it’s no longer than 28 characters, I believe).
    Copy and paste this address into your address bar, or google ‘The Writer Automaton’ 🙂

    1. How you get from an article about a 19th-century chess hoax, to your own statement, is more than I can fathom.

Leave a Reply to LauraCancel reply