The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. II., No. 5, April, 1836Various
General
The Southern Literary Messenger, Vol. II., No. 5, April, 1836
Various
American literature -- 19th century -- Periodicals
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 eyes
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 {324} intended to influence, in any degree, the machinery
itself. Their operation, whatever that operation should prove to be,
must necessarily have reference to the eye 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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