While I was browsing in Wikipedia, an article about a chess-playing machine called The Turk caught my eye. It turns out that in 1770 a guy named Wolfgang von Kempelen built a machine which would play chess. The only downside (or rather upside) being that it was actually a human who was hiding inside and not the machine who played. Sounds like a scenario a movie but it actually was so. But that’s not the best part. The machine had travelled Europe, it (or rather he) even played in the USA, etc but it was not until about 1850 (well, that’s a rough estimate) that people finally revealed it was not a machine but a person playing. How strange is that? It took almost a century to find out it was a hoax…

In any case, you can read the full story of Turk in the Wikipedia.

Oh, and yeah, I play chess. Ocasionally. Mostly for the fun of it. I just need to extend it to Go, err…