In the 18th century, inventor Wolfgang von Kempelen constructed a chess-playing automaton that looked like a Turk sitting behind a table.

“The Turk“ only lost 6 games out of 300 played, and he even outsmarted Napoleon, which made it extremely famous. No one could guess how it worked: everybody saw that the machine mostly consisted of the mechanism, and there wasn’t enough room for a person inside.

Later, though, it was found that there was a real chess player inside — he lost both his legs in the war. He saw the chessboard with the help of magnets and controlled ”The Turk."