Mechanical Dolls/ Automatons
The building of automatons (moving mechanical machines) flourished during the Victorian age and had a universal appeal.
One of the most famous and influential was designed and built by Wolfgang Von Kempelen, a specialist music box maker. His chess-playing Turk baffled and amazed Europe until it was revealed to be a hoax: the figure was actually controlled by a man hidden inside the box.
In London, Charles Babbage watched the Turk in action and also thought it a hoax, although it did make him think about how a real calculating machine could work; this eventually resulted in his creation of the ‘difference engine’ considered today to have been the world’s very first computer.
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