Maelzel was the inventor of the Metronome (1815), a piece of mechanism known to all instructors of music: the automaton _Trumpeter_ (1808), and the _Pan-Harmonicum_ (1805). He had a strange career as the exhibitor of the Chess Player. After showing the automaton in various cities of Europe, Maelzel sold it to Napoleon’s step-son, Eugène Beauharnais, the Viceroy of the Kingdom of Italy. But the old love of “adventurous travel with the Turbaned Turk” took possession of him, and he succeeded in buying back the Chess Player from its royal owner. He went to Paris with it in 1817 and 1818, afterwards to London, meeting everywhere with success. In 1826 he brought it to America. The Chess Player excited the greatest interest throughout the United States. Noted chess experts did their best to defeat it, but rarely succeeded. [Illustration: THE AUTOMATON CHESS PLAYER.] Now for a description of the automaton. The audience was introduced into a large room, at one end of which hung crimson curtains. These curtains being drawn aside, Maelzel rolled forward a box on castors. Behind the box or {109} table, which was two feet and a half high, three feet and a half long, and two feet wide, was seated cross-legged, the figure of a Turk. The chair on which the figure was affixed was permanently attached to the box. At the top of the box was a chess-board. The figure had its eyes fixed intently upon this board, its right hand and arm being extended towards the board, its left, which was somewhat raised, holding a long pipe. Four doors, two in front, and two in the rear of the box, were opened, and a lighted candle thrust into the cavities. Nothing was to be seen except cog wheels, levers, and intricate machinery. A long drawer, which contained the chessmen and a cushion, was pulled out. Two doors in the Turk’s body were thrown open, and the candle held inside, to satisfy the spectators that nothing but machinery was contained therein. Maelzel wound up the automaton with a large key, took away the pipe, and placed the cushion under the arm of the figure. Curious to relate the automaton played with its left hand. In Von Kempelen’s day, the person selected to play with the figure, sat at the same chess-board with it, but Maelzel altered this. A rope separated the machine from the audience, and the player sat at a small table, provided with a chess-board, some ten or twelve feet away from the Turk. The automaton invariably chose the white chess-men, and made the first move, its fingers opening as the hand was extended towards the board, and the piece picked up and removed to its proper square.