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Page 87
I. The moves of the Turk are not made at regular intervals of time,
but accommodate themselves to the moves of the antagonist--although
this point (of regularity) so important in all kinds of mechanical
contrivance, might have been readily brought about by limiting the
time allowed for the moves of the antagonist. For example, if this
limit were three minutes, the moves of the Automaton might be made at
any given intervals longer than three minutes. The fact then of
irregularity, when regularity might have been so easily attained,
goes to prove that regularity is unimportant to the action of the
Automaton--in other words, that the Automaton is not a _pure
machine._
2. When the Automaton is about to move a piece, a distinct motion is
observable just beneath the left shoulder, and which motion agitates
in a slight degree, the drapery covering the front of the left
shoulder. This motion invariably precedes, by about two seconds, the
movement of the arm itself--and the arm never, in any instance, moves
without this preparatory motion in the shoulder. Now let the
antagonist move a piece, and let the corresponding move be made by
Maelzel, as usual, upon the board of the Automaton. Then let the
antagonist narrowly watch the Automaton, until he detect the
preparatory motion in the shoulder. Immediately upon detecting this
motion, and before the arm itself begins to move, let him withdraw
his piece, as if perceiving an error in his manoeuvre. It will then
be seen that the movement of the arm, which, in all other cases,
immediately succeeds the motion in the shoulder, is withheld--is not
made--although Maelzel has not yet performed, on the board of the
Automaton, any move corresponding to the withdrawal of the
antagonist. In this case, that the Automaton was about to move is
evident--and that he did not move, was an effect plainly produced by
the withdrawal of the antagonist, and without any intervention of
Maelzel.
This fact fully proves, ~--that the intervention of Maelzel, in
performing the moves of the antagonist on the board of the Automaton,
is not essential to the movements of the Automaton, 2--that its
movements are regulated by _mind--_by some person who sees the board
of the antagonist, 3--that its movements are not regulated by the
mind of Maelzel, whose back was turned towards the antagonist at the
withdrawal of his move.
3. The Automaton does not invariably win the game. Were the machine a
pure machine this would not be the case--it would always win. The
_principle _being discovered by which a machine can be made to _play
_a game of chess, an extension of the same principle would enable it
to win a game--a farther extension would enable it to win _all
_games--that is, to beat any possible game of an antagonist. A little
consideration will convince any one that the difficulty of making a
machine beat all games, Is not in the least degree greater, as
regards the principle of the operations necessary, than that of
making it beat a single game. If then we regard the Chess-Player as a
machine, we must suppose, (what is highly improbable,) that its
inventor preferred leaving it incomplete to perfecting it-- a
supposition rendered still more absurd, when we reflect that the
leaving it incomplete would afford an argument against the
possibility of its being a pure machine--the very argument we now
adduce.
4. When the situation of the game is difficult or complex, we never
perceive the Turk either shake his head or roll his eyes. It is only
when his next move is obvious, or when the game is so circumstanced
that to a man in the Automaton's place there would be no necessity
for reflection. Now these peculiar movements of the head and eves are
movements customary with persons engaged in meditation, and the
ingenious Baron Kempelen would have adapted these movements (were the
machine a pure machine) to occasions proper for their display--that
is, to occasions of complexity. But the reverse is seen to be the
case, and this reverse applies precisely to our supposition of a man
in the interior. When engaged in meditation about the game he has no
time to think of setting in motion the mechanism of the Automaton by
which are moved the head and the eyes. When the game, however, is
obvious, he has time to look about him, and, accordingly, we see the
head shake and the eyes roll.
5. When the machine is rolled round to allow the spectators an
examination of the back of the Turk, and when his drapery is lifted
up and the doors in the trunk and thigh thrown open, the interior of
the trunk is seen to be crowded with machinery. In scrutinizing this
machinery while the Automaton was in motion, that is to say while the
whole machine was moving on the castors, it appeared to us that
certain portions of the mechanism changed their shape and position in
a degree too great to be accounted for by the simple laws of
perspective; and subsequent examinations convinced us that these
undue alterations were attributable to mirrors in the interior of the
trunk. The introduction of mirrors among the machinery could not have
been intended to influence, in any degree, the machinery itself.
Their operation, whatever that operation should prove to be, must
necessarily have reference to the eve of the spectator. We at once
concluded that these mirrors were so placed to multiply to the vision
some few pieces of machinery within the trunk so as to give it the
appearance of being crowded with mechanism. Now the direct inference
from this is that the machine is not a pure machine. For if it were,
the inventor, so far from wishing its mechanism to appear complex,
and using deception for the purpose of giving it this appearance,
would have been especially desirous of convincing those who witnessed
his exhibition, of the _simplicity _of the means by which results so
wonderful were brought about.
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