BookBrowse Reviews The Chess Machine: An historical adventure based on the true story of a legendary invention

It is estimated that 300 million TV viewers watched Garry Kasparov lose to IBM's Deep Blue in 1997*. The audience was a lot smaller when Wolfgang von Kempelen unveiled his Mechanical Turk to The Empress Maria Theresia and her court in 1770, but they were no less surprised to witness a machine beat a man at chess. Little did they know that the Turk was a very clever fraud, one of the most elaborate hoaxes in history.

Although a fair amount is known about the life of Wolfgang von Kempelen, nothing is known about the chess player(s) who hid inside the machine, so Lohr has liberally played with the known facts to create the central character of Tibor, a deeply religious and honest dwarf who, through circumstances beyond his control finds...