Detail of the Reproduction of the Chess Player in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 2020

Reproduction of the Chess Player (The Turk)
original: ca. 1769; reproduction: 1975-2005

Original: Austrian, Vienna; reproduction: Los Angeles


Object Details

Title: Reproduction of the Chess Player (The Turk)

Date: original: ca. 1769; reproduction: 1975-2005

Culture: Original: Austrian, Vienna; reproduction: Los Angeles

Medium: Wood, brass, fabric, steel

Dimensions: 66 × 56 × 40 in. (167.6 × 142.2 × 101.6 cm)

Classification: Reproductions-Models

Credit Line: Mr. John Gaughan, Los Angeles


Touted as an android that could defeat chess masters, Wolfgang von Kempelen’s famed illusion debuted at the court of Empress Maria Theresa during wedding celebrations for her daughter in 1769. Over the course of the eighteenth century, the chess player (known in its time as The Turk for its costume) won games against Catherine the Great and Benjamin Franklin. When Napoléon Bonaparte tried to cheat, it wiped all the pieces from the board. The mysterious machine sparked discussions of the possibilities and limits of artificial intelligence, and it inspired the development of the power loom, the telephone, and the computer. The original and its secrets were destroyed in a fire in 1854. Video The subject of more than eight hundred publications attempting to uncover its secrets, Kempelen’s illusion also inspired a 1927 silent movie, The Chess Player, directed by Raymond Bernard. In the sequence shown here, the inventor presents his creation at court. The year of its release, this early science-fiction drama attracted more attention than Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, a now-legendary film that also involves an android.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/759720