Author: Pierre Bourget
Date: 06:40:51 07/25/02
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On July 24, 2002 at 23:56:57, Chris Kantack wrote: > >I've just completed reading Tom Standage's new book "The Turk". >I had little interest in "The Turk" prior to reading this book. But I found it >at my local library (which rarely gets chess books) so I took it home and was >pleasently surprised. "The Turk" is very well written and is quite an >interesting story. > >The Turk was built in the late 1700's and was passed off as an automaton >that could play chess. Nowadays we know that the Turk was actually guided >by a human (usually a very good chess player) hidden inside the machine. > >What is fascinating about the Turk is how it essentially fooled the world >for 85 years! Even after you learn how it worked (near the end of the book) >---the means by which it was done is quite a fascinating read in itself. > >The Turk's 254+ pages are broken down into 12 chapters. The book begins it >story with a brief history of automata (early 1700's. It then goes on to cover >the life and times of the people who created and exhibited this 18th Century >chess playing machine. > >The Turk had quite a chess playing career playing the likes of Benjamin >Franklin, Philidor, Napolean Bonaparte, and Charles Babbage. Many other >people were inspired by performances of the Turk including Edgar Allen Poe. > >If you have even the slightest interest in the Turk, I highly recommend this >book. It's a brand new book (copyright 2002). My local library is filing >it under the section on books about chess (794.1). I don't know the Dewey >Decimal system's number for magician books but this book would have equal >appeal as a magician's book. (So potentially it could be filed with books >about stage magic in other libraries.) > >NPR radio did a story on "The Turk" a few months ago. Check out this link >for the audio report: > >http://search.npr.org/cf/cmn/segment_display.cfm?segID=143293 > >Chris Kantack >http://home.earthlink.net/~kantack/lcdchess/home.htm Could you tell me if the book have gamescores of the Turk ? Thanks. Pierre
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