Famous Phonies

by Brianna DuMont

  While Qin Shi may have begun the tradition of Chinese emperors, it was the Hans that decided just about everything else until 1911.

  everything else:

  Including the Confucian craze, the spread of Buddhism, the Silk Road, and inventions like paper, porcelain, and a seismograph for detecting earthquakes. The Han wrote the first history book of China and started China’s love of jade for its mystical properties. They were regarded as the most powerful dynasty in Chinese history, and other dynasties liked to reminisce and look to them for inspiration on how to unite an empire. The ethnic Chinese still refer to themselves as the Han.

  Luckily for Huangdi, the Han emperor, Wudi (pronounced Woo-dee), installed Confucian principles as the main guidelines for life. He included rulers acting like the sage emperors in order to get their own shot at immortality—in other words, acting like Huangdi. Unluckily for everyone else, Wudi ended up not being so different from Qin Shi after all. By the last few decades of his fifty-four-year reign, only one of his seven chancellors died a natural death.

  Besides getting his kicks off of chopping up everyone from commoners to family members, Wudi also enjoyed the idea of immortality of the Huangdi variety.

  Like Qin Shi, Wudi could totally see himself flying around on a dragon of his very own all the way up to heaven with all his ladies, feeling the wind in his hair and eating dewdrops. But the ladies weren’t necessary. He (supposedly) said, “If I could become like the Yellow Emperor, I would leave my wife and children behind without hesitation.” Considering he went through women pretty quickly, this isn’t hard to imagine.

  A naked man ran by here.

  To keep all the good mojo flowing Huangdi’s way, and to give himself a great chance at immortality, Wudi and the rest of the Han continued to make sacrifices to the Yellow Emperor and built another shrine at the mausoleum at Yan’an. Today, the mausoleum is a symbol of the Chinese nation and remains important in the current politics of the country, even getting special festivities every April.

  How to Survive the Centuries

  As you may have noticed, the twentieth century is when everything changed for China. Emperors were no longer around, and the country went bananas. Again.

  In 1911, the Qing (pronounced Ching) emperors were overthrown and the Republic of China was born (but you can call it China for short).

  The buzzword became Zhonghua Minzu.

  Zhonghua Minzu:

  A nickname for one big Chinese family.

  To them, Zhonghua Minzu consisted of the Han and four other ethnic groups, which made up one big, happy family. It was like the Brady Bunch on a dragon-sized scale, but they called it the Five Races Under One Union. It’s probably easy to guess who the father was. Huangdi was still around, and now he wasn’t just the father of the Han, but of all five groups. Times looked good for Huangdi.

  That is, until two more revolutions arose, including the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. The man in charge, Mao Zedong, didn’t appreciate tradition or all those ancestors. Too many cobwebs. Anything that was considered old or ancient was smashed. This included everything from old artifacts to old culture to old people.

  As the ancestor of ancestors, Huangdi pretty much epitomized old stuff, so for a decade (1966–1976) he slunk around in hiding. But Huangdi had already survived thousands of years. He could wait a mere ten more to steal the spotlight again.

  Five Races Under One Union

  By the 1980s, Mao was dead and Huangdi was back, and he had an even bigger role. Now Huangdi wasn’t just the ancestor of the five ethnic groups, but of fifty-six.

  That’s a lot of kids for Huangdi to support.

  It hasn’t always been one big happy family, though. The claim that all fifty-six groups descended from Huangdi has been used to rationalize China’s expansion in the region. Huangdi is probably used to all the politics, but instead of justifying invasions in the Warring States Period, he’s justifying invasions in the modern period. Which is pretty convenient for Huangdi.

  More Political Than Human

  Whether he was only an oral tradition, a god, or just an invention of sly storytelling elitists, in the end, Huangdi was never an actual man. Almost five thousand years later this legend is still being used in political maneuvers in China.

  Just remember, stories of the Yellow Emperor were first recorded over two thousand years after he supposedly took to the sky on his dragon. If this story doesn’t smell as questionable as rotting fish hanging out in a barrel under direct sunlight for a week, then your nose must be broken.

  In the end, it’s important to remember that stories reflect the times in which they were written—not the actual time they describe. Including the new ones. End of story.

  Chapter

  12

  The Turk

  Practically the Terminator

  Lived: Eighteenth to nineteenth century CE, Europe, America

  Occupation: Chess-playing Automaton

  A Whopper of a Lie

  Automata were the dinosaurs of computers.

  automata:

  More than one robot.

  They didn’t chomp on ferns (or other dinosaurs, if they were the carnivorous kind). Rather, they were an ancient type of robot. Some were even programmable—like a computer. Instead of doing complicated logarithms or downloading the latest app, they did the same thing over and over again.

  Whatever you do, don’t imagine her coming to life at night.

  Many told the time—you can call them clocks. Some were human-like and moved their arms or heads up and down, ensuring nightmares for life for little kids. Some used to amuse, like the mechanical duck that “digested” food and pooped it out. But maybe the greatest thing an automata ever did was help inspire two ginormous revolutions—the Industrial and the computer.

  Well, sort of.

  The Turk, a chess-playing automaton in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was arguably the most famous automaton of all time. He traveled the world, fascinating kings, queens, scientists, and inventors. He was the inspiration behind some of the most important inventions in the history of human kind.

  automaton:

  One robot.

  Only problem, he was a total fake. See if you can figure out the hoax of the Turk.

  Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better

  Eighteenth-century European elites were used to being wooed. They had everyone kissing their aristocratic behinds, including all kinds of riff-raff who wanted their patronage (i.e., their money). So in order to impress them, inventors had to be impressive.

  Wolfgang von Kempelen, inventor extraordinaire, never wanted to build the chess-player. He just wanted to be a scientist, but he picked a really bad time to stick his foot in his mouth. He did it in front of his queen.

  During a performance by a French conjurer, Wolfgang leaned into Maria Theresa, Queen of Hungary and Bohemia, and Archduchess of Austria (not to mention Holy Roman Empress), and dismissively explained what he thought was going on—a loud show of noise, smoke, and mirrors with a few automata doing tricks his dog could do in his sleep. Kempelen claimed that he could do better. So the Queen told him to prove it. Kempelen’s mouth probably dropped to the floor, which would’ve made it easier to get his foot out.

  She excused him from his court duties and told him to crack at it. She also told him he better not fail: this was a matter of national pride now. So Kempelen spent the next six months building his deceptive masterpiece.

  red herrings:

  Not actual fish, but distractions or fake outs to hide what’s really going on.

  Throwing Red Fish

  Every great magician knows that it’s imperative to throw a couple of red herrings at the audience to misdirect them. Luckily for Kempelen, he was a master performer. When he finally unveiled his automaton, he had the queen and everybody else at court eating out of the palm of his hand.

  He told them that the Turk was more than a mere clockwork, wind-up automaton—he was an intelligent, fast-thinking, ch
ess-playing marvel that could beat the pants off anyone in Europe.

  First, Kempelen brought out his life-size automaton, which was a mechanical man who sat behind a huge wooden box looking very exotic and smoking a pipe (smoking was the cool kid thing to do in late eighteenth-century Europe). The automaton had dark skin and wore a turban and a tunic with bright billowing sleeves (during that time, exotic servants were also cool).

  Kempelen announced to an intrigued audience that he had created an automaton that could play chess. That’s right! It didn’t need pre-determined moves like all the other automata out there. It could think for itself. (It was one step away from turning into the Terminator.)

  In order to prove to his skeptical audience that there weren’t any children chess masters or dwarfs secretly hiding inside, Kempelen opened the box and stuck a candle inside. The audience saw some complicated machinery and the back wall. Positive that everyone believed it was empty except for clockwork, he then set up a chessboard, wound up the Turk, and asked for a victim . . . um . . . volunteer.

  More exotic than chocolate—the other dark desire.

  The Turk made the first move. He could pick up any piece and make any move, but that wasn’t all. If a player tried cheating, the Turk called him out on it. He’d pick up the offending move, put it back, and went ahead with his own turn, shaking his head sadly at the cheater. If the player tried cheating again, the Turk would clear the board with a sweep of his hand. After all, even robots have morals.

  The Turk usually beat his opponent within half an hour. He took no prisoners. Not one to dally, he quickly blew through the Austrian court. The astonished queen insisted that Kempelen trot out the Turk whenever an important visitor came to Vienna to show off this amazing invention. She was bursting with national pride now.

  You’d think Kempelen would have been thrilled. He had impressed the queen and fulfilled his promise. But he wasn’t happy at all. Devastated might describe it better. He wanted to be a scientist, not an inventor for the court’s entertainment. For a while, he tried pretending that the Turk was broken, but it didn’t work for long. Maria Theresa always seemed to see right through his bluffs. Finally, Queen Maria Theresa died and Kempelen dismantled the Turk—for good, he thought.

  He was wrong.

  Around Europe in Two Years

  Soon after taking the throne, the new king, Joseph II, insisted that Kempelen bring the Turk out of retirement when Russian royalty came to court. This was exactly the sort of thing Kempelen didn’t want to be suckered into doing again, but you don’t say no to a king. Not if you enjoy keeping all your body parts.

  Maybe Kempelen should have sabotaged the Turk during that performance, because it did such a good job of pummeling everyone into submission that King Joseph II insisted he show it off to the rest of Europe. A two-year vacation touring Europe doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world to most people, but Kempelen wasn’t most people. He wanted to be taken seriously as a scientist, but when a king makes a request, it’s best to break out your passport.

  playing:

  This was considered an acceptable way to spend your time back when a person could make a living playing chess blindfolded.

  Paris was a chess-playing hot spot, so Kempelen took his act there first. Chess masters sat around all day playing in cafes, so a giant automaton with a built-in table fit right in.

  The Turk was a roaring success in the City of Lights. During Kempelen’s Parisian visit, many tried to discover the secret of the Turk, but they all failed. Kempelen was too crafty for those Frenchmen.

  He never touched the Turk, except to wind him up every once in a while or to tap his fingers on the box as a distraction. Sometimes, just to prove how self-sufficient the Turk was, Kempelen hung out in the audience while the robot beat chess greats from all over the continent like a drum. Victorian Europe was baffled and bewitched. The Turk didn’t always win, but he won enough to make people suspicious of it and of Kempelen.

  Theories about the Turk ranged from the absurd to the more absurd. It didn’t help when a chess-playing monkey turned up in Baghdad. One theory claimed that Kempelen had hired the monkey and slipped him inside the Turk’s sleeves with a few bananas to keep his chess master happy. (No monkeys were hurt [or even involved] in the making of this show.)

  Some people insisted Kempelen used black magic to beat the chess players. Another popular theory was that dwarves were hidden inside the Turk. Others stuck to the more scientific line of reasoning, such as the use of magnets and machinery more complex than ever seen before. To disprove this theory, Kempelen allowed magnets to come close to the box. The Turk still won, so people decided it must be witchcraft after all.

  By the time Kempelen and his invention arrived in London, no one had figured out the secret. Now, lowly commoners were able to try their luck against the machine, but still the Turk rarely lost. All the great thinkers of the day felt compelled to write about him, so there were tons of pamphlets and books circulating about the intelligent robot. He was more popular than sliced bread.

  Creating a Masterpiece

  Edgar Allen Poe’s poems could practically depress a puppy, they were so bleak. But before he started down the road to misery, he saw the Turk play in 1835. It inspired him to write an article debunking the mystery of the Turk.

  Poe was dead wrong in his article, but that’s because he said the same things all the doubters before him had. The article did get Poe quite a bit of attention, though, and it helped him form his deductive skills. The format he used to write about the Turk would be used over and over again in his soon-to-be-famous mysteries like “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” where detectives used deductive skills to find the killer. So, did the Turk help create the first detective story? Maybe.

  Finally, at the end of his two-year touring stint, Kempelen returned home and dismantled the Turk again. He planned on taking the secret of his invention to the grave. But the Turk, like the Terminator, had other plans.

  I’ll Be Back

  Johann Maelzel and the Turk were meant for each other. Both had panache, and both were good at tricking people. Maelzel knew this, and he tried hard to get Kempelen to realize this as well. Kempelen set a high price though, and Maelzel had to wait until Kempelen died. Luckily for both Maelzel and the Turk, Kempelen’s son just wanted to make a few francs and sold the chess-player for half the price his dad had asked.

  It didn’t take long for Maelzel to rediscover the Turk’s secret and to breathe new life into his dusty parts after a twenty-year retirement. If it wasn’t for him, the Turk might have stayed in some stuffy Austrian attic for centuries more.

  After adding a bit of flair to the Turk, like a voice box that would exclaim, “Echec!” (“Check!” in French), Maelzel also went on a tour of Europe—but he was actually excited about it. Maelzel would finally be able to rub shoulders with the cream of the crop, just like he knew he deserved. Europe would never know what hit ’em.

  Napoleon, a notoriously poor loser in everything from games to wars, offered to play the newly refurbished chess-player. There are many differing accounts of the event (as there usually are in history) but in each one, Napoleon tried to cheat multiple times, forcing the Turk to sweep all the pieces off the board. (Some versions claim the chess pieces went flying due to the emperor overturning the table in rage at losing.)

  Maelzel was tickled pink. Soon his automaton was the main act in a big show of metal moving parts. Maelzel himself became friends with the likes of Beethoven and French royalty. He had hit the big time. Well, sort of.

  At one point, Maelzel had to flee Europe to escape debt collectors. But that ended up being Europe’s loss, because Maelzel left the continent, taking the automaton to America with him.

  They swept through all the big East Coast American cities, inspiring both love and hatred among the people who faced off with the Turk. Along the way, they also influenced many people—and not just those interested in science.

  Let’s take this to the
battlefield, shall we?

  Maelzel came across a young P. T. Barnum during one of the Turk’s exhibitions. He gave the kid some advice on how to use the press to attract more customers. Combining mystery, oddities, and showmanship into a spectacle was something at which the young Barnum excelled, being in the circus and all. Maelzel told him he was on the right track toward success, and today, the Ringling Bros. and Barnum and Bailey’s circus still draws the crowds, calling itself “The Greatest Show on Earth.” But that’s another story for another time.

  Abracadabra!

  So how did the Turk actually work? Like most magic tricks, the truth isn’t nearly as exciting as the trick. And like most magic, illusion is the key. The Turk wasn’t an intelligent, self-thinking automaton. In fact, he wasn’t an automaton at all. None of his mechanical clockwork parts moved his body, and he didn’t follow a set of predetermined steps. His arms moved by levers put in motion by the operator and he didn’t think for himself. The Turk couldn’t even tell you the time!

  Not Just a Pretty Face

  Kempelen did more than create the Turk. Once he finally got his way and went back to L.A.T (Life After Turk), he kept inventing things. He created an exploding steam engine (although the exploding part wasn’t planned), a typewriter for the blind, and a talking machine.

  The talking machine that a young Alexander Graham Bell saw years later was a replica of Kempelen’s original. The sight inspired him and he invented his own talking machine. Today, we call it a telephone.