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

I found this nice page of Franklin chess trivia, which includes this great anecdote:

Another time, Franklin was playing chess with the elderly Duchess of Bourbon, who made a move that exposed her king. Franklin then proceeded to capture the king. The duchess, knowing the proper rules to chess, said, “we do not take Kings so.” Franklin responded, “We do in America.” This anecdote was first told by Thomas Jefferson in his memoirs.

Again, there’s a bit of artistic license at play here: It was reported by Franklin’s grandson Temple (who accompanied him in Paris as his secretary) that Franklin did enjoy the game, and he even had a pamphlet about the Automaton in his library when he died (more about that pamphlet in a few pages; it wasn’t yet written at the time this scene takes place). So then — why did I have Franklin storm out at the end of the game? Well, Franklin had a reputation as a sore loser, and his behavior frequently departed from his own “Poor Richard” moralizing. Having him leave in a huff seemed a better way to encapsulate his personality, though it’s probably not entirely true to history.