The “Mechanical Turk” was an elaborate mechanical device that its inventor claimed could play chess. In fact, a small but very skilled chess-player hid within its base and directed all its moves. This elaborate hoax toured Europe, Canada and the United States from the 1770s until its destruction by fire in 1854. This early representation of the possibility of machine intelligence was part of a broader fascination with complex machines in the 18th and 19th centuries, enabled by concurrent advances in science and technology.

Philipp Gottfried Printz, Mechanical Turk or The Automaton Chess Player, 1783