In our technological heyday a chess-playing “automaton” may not seem like a marvel. But during the late 18th and early 19th century, it was one of the most fascinating devices ever contrived.

In 1769, Maria Theresa, the empress of Austria-Hungary, summoned Wolfgang von Kempelen to the imperial court to watch the performance of a French conjurer. After dispelling the conjurer’s performance as mere trickery, Kempelen took the empress’ challenge to create something that could impress the court without tricks and illusions.

After only six months, Kempelen had created a machine capable of playing chess with a human opponent.

The machine consisted of a dark, Turkish-looking figure with a turban – thus the name “The Turk” – that sat behind a large wooden cabinet with a chessboard on top. He could move his left arm to move the chess pieces, roll his eyes and shake his head when his opponent took too long, and he played chess very, very well. The Turk went on to amaze many a crowd both in Europe and America, and went through quite a few different owners (one of whom was Napoleon’s son).

Theories about how the Turk worked pervaded the newspapers of the time, and quite a few books were written on the subject.

During the Turk’s life it played chess against such famous people as Benjamin Franklin, Napoleon and Catherine the Great, and was written about by Charles Babbage and even Edgar Allen Poe.

“The Turk” was both an enjoyable and quick book to read. Tom Standage’s simple writing style, though sometimes too quick to the point, makes the book accessible to engineering- and chess- know-nothings (such as myself).

The way Standage tells the story makes it seem almost like a mystery novel of sorts; he reveals many theories of how the Turk worked proposed during its life, but he doesn’t say whether these theories were necessarily right or wrong until one of the last few chapters.

When the mystery of the Turk is finally revealed, the book loses a bit of the captivating effect that made it cohesive and interesting.

Standage devotes the last couple of chapters to examining the philosophical ramifications of machine intelligence, and though these observations are good in their own right, they seem out of place with the rest of the book.

“The Turk” is chock-full of 18th- and 19th-century history, and Standage often takes a few pages to tell about how the Turk influenced people and inventions of the time.

Sometimes these digressions get in the way of the flow of the book, but the anecdotes add to the overall aesthetic of the story.

Standage manages to present the life of the Turk and the fascination of the 18th and 19th century audiences well, and his portrayal of the inventor and subsequent owners spice it up with some drama; a flat out story on just the machine would have been rather boring.

“The Turk” was quite interesting and captivating, despite some shortfalls in the overall structure of the book. Standage has created a synthesis of chess, engineering, and history that entertains and informs.