Who was [Leonardo Torres Quevedo]? Not exactly a household name, but as [IEEE Spectrum] points out, he invented a chess automaton in 1920 that would foreshadow the next century’s obsession with ...

Kempelen’s Mechanical Turk In 1770s a Hungarian bureaucrat ... approach and sit opposite the automaton to play a game of Chess. The automaton would then come to life, picking up the pieces ...