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Ajeeb was a ChessBase :: Spotlights :: Der Schachtürke
Ajeeb was a chess
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 dist ...
-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 ...
", created by Charles Hooper (a cabinet maker), first presented at the Royal Polytechnical Institute in 1868. A particularly intriguing piece of faux mechanical technology
Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in medicine, scie ...
(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
Harry Houdini (, born Erik Weisz; March 24, 1874 – October 31, 1926) was a Hungarian-American escape artist, magic man, and stunt performer, noted for his escape acts. His pseudonym is a reference to his spiritual master, French magician ...
, Theodore Roosevelt
Theodore Roosevelt Jr. ( ; October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or by his initials, T. R., was an American politician, statesman, soldier, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26t ...
, and O. Henry
William Sydney Porter (September 11, 1862 – June 5, 1910), better known by his pen name O. Henry, was an American writer known primarily for his short stories, though he also wrote poetry and non-fiction. His works include " The Gift of the ...
.
Ajeeb's name was derived from the Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walte ...
word عجيب (''ʿajīb'') meaning "wonderful, marvelous." The genius behind the device were players such as Harry Nelson Pillsbury
Harry Nelson Pillsbury (December 5, 1872 – June 17, 1906) was an American chess player. At the age of 22, he won one of the strongest tournaments of the time (winning the Hastings 1895 chess tournament), but his illness and early death preven ...
(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
Coney Island is a peninsular neighborhood and entertainment area in the southwestern section of the New York City borough of Brooklyn. The neighborhood is bounded by Brighton Beach and Manhattan Beach to its east, Lower New York Bay to th ...
in 1915. Solomon Lipschuetz was one of Ajeeb's notable opponents during this period. The machine also played 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 ...
, matching against figures such as 1920s American champ Sam Gonotsky, who would also direct the machine under the ownership of Hattie Elmore.
In the history of such devices, it succeeded the "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 wa ...
" and preceded "Mephisto
Mephisto or Mephistopheles is one of the chief demons of German literary tradition.
Mephisto or Mephistopheles may also refer to:
Film and television
* '' Méphisto'', a 1931 French film
* ''Mephisto'' (1981 film), a German-Hungarian film based ...
".References
History of chess Chess automatons 1868 in chess 19th-century robots 19th-century hoaxes {{Chess-stub