Johann Wolfgang Ritter von Kempelen de Pázmánd (23 January 1734 – 26 March 1804) was a Hungarian author and inventor, known for his "automaton" hoax, The Turk and for his speaking machine.

In this video we are talking about Von Kempelen’s chess-playing machine, The Turk, a chess-playing automaton presented to Maria Theresa of Austria in 1769. The machine consisted of a life-sized model of a human head and torso, dressed in Turkish robes and a turban, seated behind a large cabinet on top of which a chessboard was placed. The machine appeared to be able to play a strong game of chess against a human opponent, but was in fact merely an elaborate simulation of mechanical automation: a human chess master concealed inside the cabinet puppeteered the Turk from below by means of a series of levers.