Historical detoursSourced
An automatic chess player.
With a person inside.
The Mechanical Turk, first exhibited in 1770, appeared to play chess by itself. A hidden human player actually controlled it.
The apparent automation
concealed human work.
Summary / translation: Unbubly · CC BY-SA 4.0
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Mechanical Turk · Wikimedia contributors
Adapted, summarized and translated from the source. Adapted text is also available under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Reviewed: 2026-09-30