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Ajeeb
Ajeeb was a chess-playing "automaton", created by Charles Hooper (a cabinet maker), first presented at the Royal Polytechnical Institute in 1868. A particularly intriguing piece of faux mechanical technology (while presented as entirely automated, it in fact concealed a strong human chess player inside), it drew scores of thousands of spectators to its games, the opponents for which included Harry Houdini, Theodore Roosevelt, and O. Henry. Ajeeb's name was derived from the Arabic word عجيب (''ʿajīb'') meaning "wonderful, marvelous." The genius behind the device were players such as Harry Nelson Pillsbury (1898–1904), Albert Beauregard Hodges, Constant Ferdinand Burille, Charles Moehle, and Charles Francis Barker. Moehle, for instance, gained further popularity playing chess in the United States, where the contraption was also exhibited in the Eden Museum in 1885 and Coney Island in 1915. Solomon Lipschuetz was one of Ajeeb's notable opponents during this period. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ajeeb
Ajeeb was a chess-playing "automaton", created by Charles Hooper (a cabinet maker), first presented at the Royal Polytechnical Institute in 1868. A particularly intriguing piece of faux mechanical technology (while presented as entirely automated, it in fact concealed a strong human chess player inside), it drew scores of thousands of spectators to its games, the opponents for which included Harry Houdini, Theodore Roosevelt, and O. Henry. Ajeeb's name was derived from the Arabic word عجيب (''ʿajīb'') meaning "wonderful, marvelous." The genius behind the device were players such as Harry Nelson Pillsbury (1898–1904), Albert Beauregard Hodges, Constant Ferdinand Burille, Charles Moehle, and Charles Francis Barker. Moehle, for instance, gained further popularity playing chess in the United States, where the contraption was also exhibited in the Eden Museum in 1885 and Coney Island in 1915. Solomon Lipschuetz was one of Ajeeb's notable opponents during this period. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mechanical Turk
The Turk, also known as the Mechanical Turk or Automaton Chess Player (german: Schachtürke, ; hu, A Török), was a fraudulent chess-playing machine constructed in the late 18th century. From 1770 until its destruction by fire in 1854 it was exhibited by various owners as an automaton, though it was eventually revealed to be an elaborate hoax.See Schaffer, Simon (1999), "Enlightened Automata", in Clark et al. (Eds), ''The Sciences in Enlightened Europe'', Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, pp. 126–165. Constructed and unveiled in 1770 by Wolfgang von Kempelen (1734–1804) to impress Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, the mechanism appeared to be able to play a strong game of chess against a human opponent, as well as perform the knight's tour, a puzzle that requires the player to move a knight to occupy every square of a chessboard exactly once. The Turk was in fact a mechanical illusion that allowed a human chess master hiding inside to operate the ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Albert Hodges
Albert Beauregard Hodges (July 21, 1861 – February 3, 1944) was an American chess master who was born in Nashville, Tennessee. Chess career Hodges was one of the better-known American chess masters of the late 19th century. In 1894 he lost a match to Jackson Whipps Showalter (8–9), and won a rematch (5½–3½), both in New York. Hodges became U.S. Champion, but announced that his ambitions in chess had been fulfilled, and that he was retiring to pursue a career in business. In addition to his reign as U.S. Champion, Hodges main claim to fame was playing inside Ajeeb, the 19th-century chess automaton. At the beginning of his career he lost a match to Max Judd (3–6) at St. Louis 1887, won at Chittenango 1890, shared second place, behind Hanham, at Skaneateles 1891, won a match against Eugene Delmar (5–0) at Skaneateles 1892, drew a match with Adolf Albin (4–4) at New York 1893, won at New York 1893, took second place, behind Harry Nelson Pillsbury, at New York ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mephisto (automaton)
Mephisto was the name given to a chess-playing "pseudo-automaton" built in 1876. Unlike The Turk and Ajeeb it had no hidden operator, instead being remotely controlled by electromechanical means. Constructed by Charles Godfrey Gumpel (c.1835 - 1921), an Alsatian manufacturer of artificial limbs, it took some 6 or 7 years to build and was first shown in 1878 at Gumpel's home in Leicester Square, London. Mephisto was mainly operated by chess master Isidor Gunsberg. Description ''Mephisto'' consisted of a life-size figure of an elegant devil, with one foot rendered as a cloven hoof, dressed in red velvet and seated in an armchair in front of an unenclosed, open-sided table. This table set-up was provided to reassure the player that there were no compartments beneath the board where a man could be hidden (as in "The Turk"). In addition, the public was invited to inspect the contraption before each exhibition, with the intention of demonstrating that there was no player inside. The ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sam Gonotsky
Samuel Gonotsky (born in the Russian Empire, 1902; emigrated to the United States, 1906; died in Hurley Hospital, Detroit, of pleural tuberculosis, April 5, 1929) was a leading American checkers, or English draughts, player in the Two-Move Era (1863–1929). He was an important figure in the then famous Brooklyn Checker Club in the mid 1920s along with Louis Ginsburg and became the american Champion in 1924 when he defeated Alf Jordan in the national tournament. He also matched himself against a supposed automaton machine, Ajeeb Ajeeb was a chess-playing "automaton", created by Charles Hooper (a cabinet maker), first presented at the Royal Polytechnical Institute in 1868. A particularly intriguing piece of faux mechanical technology (while presented as entirely automat ..., owned by Hattie Elmore which he later directed in matches. Kidwell, Peggy Aldrich. "Playing Checkers with Machines—from Ajeeb to Chinook." Information & Culture 50, no. 4 (2015): 578-587. He is considered ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Charles Moehle
Charles Moehle (Möhle) (26 November 1859, New York – 1898) was an American chess master. He took 3rd at New York 1880 (the 5th American Chess Congress won by George Henry Mackenzie), and shared 2nd, behind Jackson Whipps Showalter, at Cincinnati 1888 (the 1st American Chess Association Tournament). He participated in several matches; beat David Graham Baird (6.5–4.5) in 1879, and N. Gedalia (5–1) in 1879, drew with M. de la Puente (1–1) in 1883 (Philadelphia vs. Manhattan Chess Club), and lost to William H.K. Pollock (6.5–7.5) in 1890. He was one of the operators of the Ajeeb, a chess-playing "automaton An automaton (; plural: automata or automatons) is a relatively self-operating machine, or control mechanism designed to automatically follow a sequence of operations, or respond to predetermined instructions.Automaton – Definition and More ...". [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Constant Ferdinand Burille
Constant Ferdinand Burille (born 30 August 1866 – died October 1914, Boston) was an American chess master. He was a Bostonian born in Paris (according to another source - born in Boston), Burille was a member of a group of Boston chess players and theoreticians who formed a loose chess association they called the Mandarins of the Yellow Buttons. He took 15th at New York City 1889 (the 6th American Chess Congress won by Mikhail Chigorin and Max Weiss). He beat F.K. Young (13.5–1.5) in a match in 1888, and lost to Harry Nelson Pillsbury (3–7) in 1892 (Burille gave odds of pawn and move). He also played in cable chess matches New York vs. London in 1896 (won a game against Henry Edward Bird) and 1897 (lost a game to Henry Ernest Atkins). The "Burille variation" is a recognized variation in the Grünfeld defense. Burille was one of the operators of the Ajeeb, a chess-playing "automaton An automaton (; plural: automata or automatons) is a relatively self-operating machi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Checkers
Checkers (American English), also known as draughts (; British English), is a group of strategy board games for two players which involve diagonal moves of uniform game pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over opponent pieces. Checkers is developed from alquerque. The term "checkers" derives from the checkered board which the game is played on, whereas "draughts" derives from the verb "to draw" or "to move". The most popular forms of checkers in Anglophone countries are American checkers (also called English draughts), which is played on an 8×8 checkerboard; Russian draughts, Turkish draughts both on an 8x8 board, and International draughts, played on a 10×10 board – the latter is widely played in many countries worldwide. There are many other variants played on 8×8 boards. Canadian checkers and Singaporean/Malaysian checkers (also locally known as ''dum'') are played on a 12×12 board. American checkers was weakly solved in 2007 by a team of Canadian computer sc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1868 In Chess
Events January–March * January 2 – British Expedition to Abyssinia: Robert Napier leads an expedition to free captive British officials and missionaries. * January 3 – The 15-year-old Mutsuhito, Emperor Meiji of Japan, declares the ''Meiji Restoration'', his own restoration to full power, under the influence of supporters from the Chōshū and Satsuma Domains, and against the supporters of the Tokugawa shogunate, triggering the Boshin War. * January 5 – Paraguayan War: Brazilian Army commander Luís Alves de Lima e Silva, Duke of Caxias enters Asunción, Paraguay's capital. Some days later he declares the war is over. Nevertheless, Francisco Solano López, Paraguay's president, prepares guerrillas to fight in the countryside. * January 7 – The Arkansas constitutional convention meets in Little Rock. * January 9 – Penal transportation from Britain to Australia ends, with arrival of the convict ship '' Hougoumont'' in Western Australi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chess Automatons
Chess is a board game for two players, called White and Black, each controlling an army of chess pieces in their color, with the objective to checkmate the opponent's king. It is sometimes called international chess or Western chess to distinguish it from related games, such as xiangqi (Chinese chess) and shogi (Japanese chess). The recorded history of chess goes back at least to the emergence of a similar game, chaturanga, in seventh-century India. The rules of chess as we know them today emerged in Europe at the end of the 15th century, with standardization and universal acceptance by the end of the 19th century. Today, chess is one of the world's most popular games, played by millions of people worldwide. Chess is an abstract strategy game that involves no hidden information and no use of dice or cards. It is played on a chessboard with 64 squares arranged in an eight-by-eight grid. At the start, each player controls sixteen pieces: one king, one queen, two rooks, t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
