Checkers, also known as draughts, is a group of strategy board games for two players which involve diagonal moves of uniform game pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over opponent pieces. Checkers is developed from alquerque. The term "checkers" derives from the checkered board which the game is played on, whereas "draughts" derives from the verb "to draw" or "to move".
An automaton is a relatively self-operating machine, or control mechanism designed to automatically follow a sequence of operations, or respond to predetermined instructions. Some automata, such as bellstrikers in mechanical clocks, are designed to give the illusion to the casual observer that they are operating under their own power or will, like a mechanical robot. Since long ago, the term is commonly associated with automated puppets that resemble moving humans or animals, built to impress and/or to entertain people.
The Turk, also known as the Mechanical Turk or Automaton Chess Player, was a fraudulent chess-playing machine constructed in 1770, which appeared to be able to play a strong game of chess against a human opponent. For 84 years, it was exhibited on tours by various owners as an automaton. The machine survived and continued giving occaisional exhibitions until 1854, when a fire swept through the museum where it was kept, destroying the machine. Afterwards, articles were published by a son of the machine's owner revealing the Turk's secrets to the public, that it was an elaborate hoax, suspected by some, but never proven in public while the machine still existed.
Mephisto was the name given to a chess-playing "pseudo-automaton" built in 1876. Unlike The Turk and Ajeeb it had no hidden operator, instead being remotely controlled by electromechanical means.
Blindfold chess, also known as sans voir, is a form of chess play wherein the players do not see the positions of the pieces and do not touch them. This forces players to maintain a mental model of the positions of the pieces. Moves are communicated via a recognized chess notation.
El Ajedrecista is an automaton built in 1912 by Leonardo Torres y Quevedo in Madrid, one of the first autonomous machines capable of playing chess. As opposed to the human-operated The Turk and Ajeeb, El Ajedrecista was a true automaton built to play chess without human guidance. It played an endgame with three chess pieces, automatically moving a white king and a rook to checkmate the black king moved by a human opponent.
Jean (Jan) Taubenhaus was a Polish–born French chess master.
Samuel Gonotsky was a leading American checkers, or English draughts, player in the Two-Move Era (1863–1929). He was an important figure in the then famous Brooklyn Checker Club in the mid 1920s along with Louis Ginsburg and became the American Champion in 1924 when he defeated Alf Jordan in the national tournament. He also matched himself against a supposed automaton machine, Ajeeb, owned by Hattie Elmore which he later directed in matches. He is considered to be possibly the best "crossboard player" and the best US player of the 1920s.
"Maelzel's Chess Player" (1836) is an essay by Edgar Allan Poe exposing a fraudulent automaton chess player called The Turk, which had become famous in Europe and the United States and toured widely. The fake automaton was invented by Wolfgang von Kempelen in 1769 and was brought to the U.S. in 1825 by Johann Nepomuk Mälzel after von Kempelen's death.
François Pelletier was a French illusionist, famed in his time for his use of magnets as an entertainment basis for his act. His reputation was such that he was invited to perform at the court of Maria Theresa of Austria at Schönbrunn Palace in 1769. His act inspired the construction of the purported chess-playing automaton The Turk, following observation of the performance by the Hungarian Wolfgang von Kempelen.
Joseph Friedrich Freiherr von Racknitz (1744–1818) was part of the Racknitz family from Steiermark, Germany, a family that originated in 1180 at Castle Perneck. Residing in Dresden, he worked as the equivalent of a court marshal, and published an often-cited pamphlet about the chess-playing machine The Turk, Ueber den Schachspieler des Herrn von Kempelen, nebst einer Abbildung und Beschreibung seiner Sprachmachine, which attempted to reveal the secret behind the purported automaton using new illustrations as well as personal observations.
William Schlumberger was an Alsatian chess master. He is known to have taught Pierre Charles Fournier de Saint-Amant to play chess and as the operator of The Turk, a chess-playing machine which was purported to be an automaton. It was Bavarian musician and showman Johann Nepomuk Mälzel who hired him to operate The Turk. Schlumberger acted as the Turk's director in Europe and in the United States until his death from yellow fever in 1838.
The Walker Chess-player was a chess-playing "machine" created by the Walker Brothers of Baltimore, Maryland. The machine was produced in the 1820s to compete with The Turk, a world-famous chess "machine". Johann Nepomuk Mälzel, a Bavarian musician with an interest in various machines and devices who owned and operated the Turk, viewed the competing machine and attempted to buy it, but the offer was declined and the duplicate machine toured for a number of years, never receiving the fame that Mälzel's machine did, and eventually fell into obscurity.
John Gaughan is an American manufacturer of magic acts and equipment for magicians based in Los Angeles, California. His style of work is classic, not based heavily on machinery and technology.
The Chess Monthly was a short-lived monthly chess magazine produced from January 1857 and May 1861 in the United States. Edited by professional diplomat and linguistics professor Daniel Willard Fiske, it was co-edited for a time by Paul Morphy. The magazine was based in New York City.
Albert Beauregard Hodges was an American chess master who was born in Nashville, Tennessee.
Edward Freeborough was the co-author, with Charles Ranken, of Chess Openings Ancient and Modern (1889), one of the first important opening treatises in the English language and a precursor of Modern Chess Openings. He was a member of the editorial staff of the British Chess Magazine from 1883 until his death in 1896. He also wrote the books Chess Endings and Select Chess End-Games from Actual Play, and edited the book Analysis of the Chess Ending, King and Queen Against King and Rook by "Euclid" (1895).
Constant Ferdinand Burille was an American chess master.
Charles Moehle (Möhle) was an American chess master.
Jacques François Mouret (1780–1837) was a French chess master of the early 19th century who became chess tutor of the future Louis Philippe I and was one of the most successful operators of The Turk, a famous chess-playing automaton.
