Ajeeb
Ajeeb was a chess-playing "automaton", created by Charles Hooper (a cabinet maker),[1] first presented at the Royal Polytechnical Institute in 1868. A particularly intriguing piece of faux mechanical technology (while presented as entirely automated, it in fact concealed a strong human chess player inside), it drew scores of thousands of spectators to its games, the opponents for which included Harry Houdini, Theodore Roosevelt, and O. Henry.
![](../I/Harvard_Theatre_Collection_-_Ajeeb_the_Wonderful_TCS_1.183_-_cropped.jpg.webp)
![](../I/Ajeeb.jpg.webp)
Ajeeb's name was derived from the Arabic/Urdu/Persian word عجيب (ʿajīb) meaning "wonderful, marvelous." The genius behind the device were players such as Harry Nelson Pillsbury (1898–1904),[1] Albert Beauregard Hodges, Constant Ferdinand Burille,[2] Charles Moehle, and Charles Francis Barker. Moehle, for instance, gained further popularity playing chess in the United States,[3] where the contraption was also exhibited in the Eden Museum in 1885 and Coney Island in 1915.[4] Solomon Lipschuetz was one of Ajeeb's notable opponents during this period.[5] The machine also played checkers, matching against figures such as 1920s American champ Sam Gonotsky, who would also direct the machine under the ownership of Hattie Elmore.[6]
In the history of such devices, it succeeded "The Turk" and preceded "Mephisto".[7][8]
References
- Schaeffer, Jonathan (1997). One jump ahead. Springer. pp. 90. ISBN 0-387-94930-5. Retrieved 2009-03-10.
ajeeb chess.
- "Chessville :: History :: Constant Ferdinand Burille". Archived from the original on 2010-09-19. Retrieved 2010-02-14.
- Urcan, Olimpiu; Hilbert, John (2017). W.H.K. Pollock: A Chess Biography with 523 Games. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers. p. 93. ISBN 9780786458684.
- Goody, Alex (2007). Modernist Articulations: A Cultural Study of Djuna Barnes, Mina Loy and Gertrude Stein. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 213. ISBN 9781349352685.
- Davies, Stephen (2015). Samuel Lipschutz: A Life in Chess. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers. p. 22. ISBN 9780786495962.
- Kidwell, Peggy Aldrich. "Playing Checkers with Machines—from Ajeeb to Chinook." Information & Culture 50, no. 4 (2015): 578-587.
- Chess Automatons Archived 2008-10-08 at the Wayback Machine
- ChessBase :: Spotlights :: Der Schachtürke Archived 2009-03-12 at the Wayback Machine