The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 4Poe, Edgar Allan
General
The Works of Edgar Allan Poe — Volume 4
Poe, Edgar Allan
American fiction -- 19th century; Fantasy fiction; Horror tales, American; Short stories
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
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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account