The Turk: The Life and Times of the Famous Eighteenth-Century Chess Playing Machine.

• Author: Peters, Justin
• Position: Political booknotes: Turkish delight

WHEN DEEP BLUE, IBM's monolithic chess-playing computer, faced grandmaster Garry Kasparov in a best-of-six match in 1997, breathless pundits followed the action like it was the Showdown at the A.I. Corral. Warning against "the potential usurpation of mankind by its own technology," Time anointed Kasparov "the latest standard bearer in humanity's war against our own obsolescence." Kasparov had played and beaten Deep Blue once before, and he confidently predicted another win this second time around. Yet, unthinkably, Deep Blue emerged victorious--and as the media pondered the ramifications, Kasparov cried foul play. Unable or unwilling to believe that he had been bested by a computer, Kasparov whined to The New York Times that he had "met something that I couldn't explain. I have to imagine human interference, or I want an explanation."

Sour grapes aside, Kasparov's defeat, to many people, seemed like just another way in which human achievement was being overtaken by cool mechanical efficiency. Yet few people realized that this sense of electronic ennui had its antecedent 200 years prior, when a chess-playing robot known as "the Turk" confounded observers throughout Europe and America. In his intriguing new book The Turk: The Life and Times of the Famous Eighteenth-Century Chess Playing Machine, Tom Standage traces the Turk's history and defines its legacy. Standage, the technology correspondent for The Economist, has written a fast-paced, entertaining techno-history that, while overshooting its mark a few times, succeeds on the whole.

The Turk, designed at the behest of Holy Roman empress Maria Theresa, was the most famous in a series of automata that captivated kings and savants across the Continent during the 18th and 19th centuries. Built to perform a wide range of activities--from playing a trumpet to simulating the digestive system of a duck--these automata, powered by intricate systems of gears and camshafts, were miracles of craftsmanship and mechanical skill.

Yet the Turk was unique in the robotic ranks because it appeared capable of rational, independent thought. It consisted of a figure clad in a turban and flowing, "Turkish-style" robes, seated in front of a large chest, on top of which was a chessboard. When challenged to a game, the machine's operator would wind a key in the side of the chest, and, with a whirl of gears, the Turk would grab its piece and make the first move. The Turk easily won most of the games it played. If...