# Ajeeb

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{{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](/source/Mechanical_Turk).]]

'''Ajeeb''' was a [chess](/source/chess)-playing "[automaton](/source/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](/source/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](/source/Harry_Houdini), [Theodore Roosevelt](/source/Theodore_Roosevelt), and [O. Henry](/source/O._Henry).

Ajeeb's name was derived from the [Arabic](/source/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](/source/Harry_Nelson_Pillsbury) (1898–1904),<ref name="oja" /> [Albert Beauregard Hodges](/source/Albert_Hodges), [Constant Ferdinand Burille](/source/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](/source/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](/source/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](/source/S._Lipsch%C3%BCtz) 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](/source/checkers), matching against figures such as 1920s American champ [Sam Gonotsky](/source/Sam_Gonotsky), who would also direct the machine under the ownership of Hattie Elmore.<ref>[Kidwell, Peggy Aldrich](/source/Peggy_A._Kidwell). "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](/source/Mechanical_Turk) and preceded [Mephisto](/source/Mephisto_(automaton)).<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

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Adapted from the Wikipedia article [Ajeeb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajeeb) by Wikipedia contributors ([contributor history](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ajeeb?action=history)). Available under [Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/). Changes may have been made.