A German museum has recreated one of the great marvels – and hoaxes – of chess, the infamous automaton, “The Turk.”

The Turk was a kind of 18th century version of Deep Blue:

A Hungarian engineer, Wolfgang von Kempelen, built what he called a mechanical chessplayer, at the request of Austrian empress Maria Theresa, in 1769.

His contraption appeared to be a large wooden console, which when opened revealed gear and levers and whatnot, with a turbaned mannequin and a chessboard atop it.

When challenged to play a game, the Turk would go through elaborate motions and then play excellent moves – although it was clear that the mannequin is not human.

Von Kempelen’s creation was a phenomenon. Napoleon played it (and lost). Edgar Allen Poe wrote an essay explaining how it worked.

The Turk toured Europe and was eventually destroyed by fire at a Philadelphia museum.

Yet it still inspires awe: Two movies were made based on it – and since 2000, three books have been written about it.

And now it has been reconstructed at the Heinz Nixdorf Museum of Paderborn, Germany, which claims to be the largest computer museum in the world.