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| title | chunk | source | category | tags | date_saved | instance |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mechanical Turk | 5/8 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_Turk | reference | science, encyclopedia | 2026-05-05T09:30:38.944310+00:00 | kb-cron |
== North American tour == The appearances of the Turk were profitable for Mälzel, and he continued by taking it and his other machines to the United States. In 1826, he opened an exhibition in New York (in the National Hotel, on 112 Broadway) that was very popular, averaging a hundred people in April, while in May "the hall was filled, and sometimes two hundred were turned away for lack of seats". It prompted many newspaper articles and anonymous threats of exposure of the hoax. Mälzel's problem was finding a talented operator for the machine, having trained an unknown woman in France before touring the United States. The "subsistence" in Paris of a former operator from Alsace, William Schlumberger "was both scanty and precarious"; and Mälzel induced him to come to Boston. As the Turk's main operator in the new world, Schlumberger "considered himself to have been fairly and kindly treated by Maelzel, and remained faithfully attached to his person and his interests to the last". Upon Schlumberger's arrival, the Turk debuted in Boston, in the Julien Hall. Mälzel claimed that "the players of Boston are at least equal to those of New York" and promised that in Boston the Turk would offer to play not only endgames but also full games. The Turk was exhibited in Boston for several weeks, and the tour moved to Philadelphia for nearly three months, during which period it "lost a full game over the course of two exhibitions to a 'Mrs. Fisher', described in the front-page Baltimore Gazette headline as a 'Lady' of the city". Following Philadelphia, the Turk moved to Baltimore, where it played for several months, losing a game against the 89-year-old Charles Carroll, a signatory of the Declaration of Independence. Mälzel continued with exhibitions around the United States until 1828, when he took some time off and visited Europe, returning in 1829. Throughout the 1830s, he continued to tour the United States. In Richmond, Virginia, the Turk was observed by Edgar Allan Poe, writing for the Southern Literary Messenger. Poe's "Maelzel's chess-player", published in April 1836 (and owing much to a book by David Brewster published in 1832), is the most famous essay on the Turk, even though many of its hypotheses were incorrect: little or nothing else written on the same subject can "approach [its] literary brilliance". By this time, frequent exhibition of the Turk and publication of numerous descriptions, however mistaken, of its workings and human agency, had reduced interest in it. The star attraction among Mälzel's exhibits was now the highly dramatic "Conflagration of Moscow". Mälzel travelled farther in 1836–37 – to Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Louisville, and New Orleans in the United States; and to Havana – and back to Philadelphia, where he spent more time preparing his Moscow diorama. In November 1837 Mälzel took the Turk on his second tour to Havana. While in Cuba, Schlumberger died of yellow fever in February 1838, leaving Mälzel without an operator or, as the other members of his company now deserted him, any other assistant. A broken man, deeply in debt and drinking heavily, Mälzel died at sea in July 1838 at the age of 65 during his return trip, leaving his machinery with the ship's captain.
== Later years == On the return of the ship on which Mälzel had died, his various machines, including the Turk, fell into the hands of the businessman John Ohl, a friend of his. Ohl attempted to auction off the Turk; but, owing to low bidding, ultimately bought it himself for $400 (equivalent to $12,000 in 2025), and less than half the winning bid for the "Panorama of Moscow", as an investment. Only when John Kearsley Mitchell – from Philadelphia, Edgar Allan Poe's personal physician, long deeply curious about the Turk – approached Ohl did the Turk change hands again. However, what Mitchell received turned out to be incomplete:
The five crates were found to contain pieces of Maelzel's other automata ... mixed in with the components of the Turk, several pieces of which were also missing and had to be retrieved from other boxes in Ohl's warehouse at Lombard Street Wharf. The Turk had lost its clothes, legs, pipe, and part of its head; a list drawn up by Mitchell of "things to be found and looked for" also included the cabinet doors, castors, and chessmen. Mitchell formed a club to restore the Turk for public appearances, completing the work in 1840. As interest in the Turk continued, Mitchell and his club deposited it to the Philadelphia Museum (founded by Charles Willson Peale), the ground floor of whose building – "at Ninth and George (now Sansom) Streets" – had since its opening in December 1838 been occupied by Nathan Dunn's Chinese Museum. Although the Turk still occasionally gave performances – and for that on 4 December 1840 it was advertised as "[having] been seen by more eyes than any terrestrial object ever exhibited" – these were devoid of professional showmanship and had little appeal. It was eventually relegated to a back corner of the museum and forgotten. Dunn's entire Chinese collection left Philadelphia for good in December 1841; but the Chinese Museum remained "the popular, but not accurate, name given to the whole building". As for the Philadelphia Museum, Edmund Peale (a grandson of the founder) bought the collection in 1845; he then quickly moved it into "the former Masonic Hall in Chestnut Street above Seventh ... All was ready by January 1846." The Chinese Museum building on George Street became the place where "[all Philadelphia society's] great public meetings came to be held as a matter of course". On 5 July 1854, a fire that had started at the National Theatre reached the Museum and destroyed the Turk. Mitchell's son Silas Mitchell arrived, but too late: he believed he had heard "through the struggling flames. ... the last words of our departed friend, the sternly whispered, oft repeated syllables, échec! échec!!"