An exhibition about Wolfgang von Kempelen's chess machine

An exhibition about the Austro-Hungarian inventor, architect and writer Wolfgang von Kempelen (1734-1804) is currently on show in Budapest and will subsequently move to the Centre for Art and Media Technology in Karlsruhe. Among other things, von Kempelen invented a chess machine and a talking machine. He was far ahead of his time with his inventions, writes József Mélyi, curator of the exhibition in conversation with László J. Győri. "Von Kempelen invented the chess machine, which conceals a human chess player who controls the chess moves of a puppet dressed in Turkish robes with the aid of complex machinery. In the 1780s von Kempelen toured Europe with his chess machine and gave a demonstration to James Watt, with whom he discussed the future of the steam engine. Nowadays, this would be the equivalent of someone using an ingeniously constructed robot to present himself as a magician and talk to the leading pioneers of genetic engineering about artificial intelligence. The chess machine was intended for pure entertainment, but von Kempelen was more interested in constructing a talking machine - a mechanism for reproducing human speech sounds."

» full article (external link, Hungarian)
More from the press review on the subject » Exhibitions / Museums, » Fine Arts, » Science / Research, » Hungary, » Austria