Ajeeb

{{Short description|Chess-playing automaton}} {{about||the Indian television series|Ajeeb (TV series)}} thumb|right|Photo of "Ajeeb the Wonderful", 1886 [[File:Ajeeb.jpg|right|thumb|An advertisement for an exhibition of Ajeeb, including an illustration of its appearance. Ajeeb was an imitation of the Turk.]]

'''Ajeeb''' was a chess-playing "automaton", created by Charles Hooper (a cabinet maker),<ref name="oja">{{cite book|last=Schaeffer|first=Jonathan|title=One jump ahead|publisher=Springer|year=1997|pages=[https://archive.org/details/onejumpaheadchal00scha_0/page/90 90]|isbn=0-387-94930-5|url=https://archive.org/details/onejumpaheadchal00scha_0|url-access=registration|quote=ajeeb chess.|accessdate=2009-03-10}}</ref> first presented at the Royal Polytechnical Institute in 1868. A 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.

Ajeeb's name was derived from the Arabic word {{Lang|ar|عجيب|italic=no|rtl=yes}} ({{Lang|ar-latn|ʿajīb}}) meaning "wonderful, marvellous, mysterious or strange". Some of the device's operators were Harry Nelson Pillsbury (1898–1904),<ref name="oja" /> Albert Beauregard Hodges, Constant Ferdinand Burille,<ref>{{Cite web |title=Constant Ferdinand Burille |url=http://www.chessville.com/misc/History/CFBurille.htm |url-status=usurped |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20100919070531/http://chessville.com/misc/History/CFBurille.htm |archive-date=2010-09-19 |access-date=2010-02-14 |website=Chessville}}</ref> Charles Moehle, and Charles Francis Barker. Moehle, for instance, gained further popularity playing chess in the United States,<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Urcan |first1=Olimpiu |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=2WEqDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA93 |title=W.H.K. Pollock: A Chess Biography with 523 Games |last2=Hilbert |first2=John |publisher=McFarland & Company, Inc. Publishers |year=2017 |isbn=9780786458684 |location=Jefferson, NC |pages=93}}</ref> where the contraption was also exhibited in the Eden Museum in 1885 and Coney Island in 1915.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Modernist Articulations: A Cultural Study of Djuna Barnes, Mina Loy and Gertrude Stein|last=Goody|first=Alex|publisher=Palgrave Macmillan|year=2007|isbn=9781349352685|location=New York|pages=213}}</ref> Solomon Lipschuetz was one of Ajeeb's notable opponents during this period.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Davies |first=Stephen |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=uFliCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA22 |title=Samuel Lipschutz: A Life in Chess |publisher=McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers |year=2015 |isbn=9780786495962 |location=Jefferson, NC |pages=22}}</ref> 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.<ref>Kidwell, Peggy Aldrich. "Playing Checkers with Machines—from Ajeeb to Chinook". ''Information & Culture'' 50, no. 4 (2015): 578–587.</ref>

In the history of such devices, it succeeded the Mechanical Turk and preceded Mephisto.<ref>[http://batgirl.atspace.com/automaton.html Chess Automatons] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081008033803/http://batgirl.atspace.com/automaton.html |date=2008-10-08 }}</ref><ref>[http://www.chessbase.de/spotlight/spotlight2.asp?id=11 ChessBase :: Spotlights :: Der Schachtürke] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090312083114/http://www.chessbase.de/spotlight/spotlight2.asp?id=11 |date=2009-03-12 }}</ref>

== References == {{Reflist}}

Category:History of chess Category:Chess automatons Category:1868 in chess Category:19th-century robots Category:19th-century hoaxes