Clockwork Game: The Illustrious Career of a Chess-Playing Automaton

The design of the front of the cabinet was a little tricky. I based mine (with permission, of course) on the replica built by John Gaughan, which includes that vertical strut between the paired front doors. The earliest drawings of the automaton seem to show that the paired doors were actually one big door, which hinged on the viewer’s right. I’ve got to say that, for the staging of the comic, it actually makes sense to have two separate doors with the strut in the middle, and having it there adds to the claustrophobic feel of the larger chamber.

I should also mention a bit of The Turk’s history that I had to omit due to story considerations: the letter board, which you can just barely make out under the pillow in that engraving. After its main chessplaying performance, von Kempelen would place an alphabet board over the chessboard and allow the audience to ask questions, which the automaton would answer by pointing to each letter in sequence — kind of like a self-driven Ouija board — and would respond in French, German and English. It’s a great story, and I’d love to have included it, but the opening scene was already overlong, and so it got left on the cutting-room floor, so to speak. Bradley Ewart’s book, Chess: Man vs Machine lists some of the questions and answers, as recorded by an author who attended one of the later performances.