The Importance of Von Kemplen's Genius

The Turk is an 18th century automaton a chess playing automaton that toured all of Europe. The man who operated it von Kemplen would challenge chess players from Napoleon to Ben Franklin to play the Turk and it supposedly never lost or rarely lost. Richard Babbage the father of computing saw it and said how would you actually build something that could do this but he knew that it couldn't be built. There was just a magician's illusion with a chess player hidden in the base cleverly hidden behind sprockets and wheels.