May 22, 2008 -- A few simple rules
Last Sunday, The New York Times ran this absolutely fantastic article about John Gaughan, the man who built the best existing replica of The Turk, and who generously allowed me to base my own design on his beautiful version. Make sure to watch the audio slideshow where he narrates the (all too brief) tour of his shop. Amazing! Hat tip to Jim O for sending me the article this morning, just in time for today's post.
In other news, Motor City went really well! I had a great time, caught up with old friends and met some new ones, and got to share ideas with fellow creators. The promo cards arrived about six hours after we left, according to the UPS website -- and they look great!
click to view larger image
I'm really pleased with them, and can't wait to hand them out at Wizard World next month. If you can't come to Chicago or SPX, and still want one, send me a self-addressed stamped envelope big enough to hold a 4 x 6" card and I'll send you one for free.
Thank you SO very much for creating and sharing this story with us. Oddly enough, I had just found THE TURK (the Standage book) at McKay's Used books in Mannasas, and was inspired to add an audio snippet to my blog on the subject.
http://www.clickcaster.com/items/the-amazing-but-true-story-of-the-turk--the-chess-playing-automaton
I bumped into the Clockwork Game today (off of Da Vinci Automata), and will eagerly subscribe to it now that I know it exists!
Again, thank you, this is wonderfully illustrated, well researched and well scripted.
H.
My pleasure, Hotspur! Glad to have found such an enthusiastic audience. It was really thoughtful of Muhammad to write such a nice piece about the comic; his blog is terrific. Welcome to all the Da Vinci Automata and Dug North readers who've found your way here!
Also -- I listened to your audio clip last week (and commented on the blog post). It was great, and really historically accurate, something that's hard to do with all the conflicting stories about The Turk. My husband and I really liked it.. but I was a little sad because poor Schlumberger didn't get a mention. :(
Everyone should go check out Hibernia On The Skids' post about The Turk here:
http://hiberniaskids.blogspot.com/2008/05/amazing-chess-playing-turk.html
I also totally love your blog. Keep posting stuff about sea battles; I'm totally getting into the Patrick O'Brian books and seeing all your entires about British Naval History is awesome.
You know, Jane, I had to laugh -- I hadn't realized you had already visited Hibernia until I went back to that post after posting above. Now *I* feel like a self-promoting tool, and I *am* using a fake name-- but it IS a persona I adopted for Second Life's "Caledon" community (very proper and Victorian don't ye know). I'm used to it, what can I say.
I'm sorry about Schlumberger, too. I wrote that for a steampunk podcast and I was already seven minutes past my alloted time limit.. so I had to compress quite a bit of it-- The American Tour, Maelzel's death-- it's all crammed into two minutes or so, sigh.
As for sea battles-- you ain't seen nothing yet. The great machinima epic THE WAR WITH VULGARIA is shooting now. Just wait!
H.
Ha! No worries; I hope you didn't think I meant *you* were a tool when I wrote that.I just get sick of creators making up online personas to promote their work. Sockpuppetry is lame.
Can't wait to see VULGARIA! Ping me when it's up.
Amazing stuff here! I'll be back lots, I'm working on a comic book on a similar theme.
Dug at the automata site sent me here and I'm glad he did.
What's your comic? Make with the linky! :)
I'm not sure where your site will place this post, it applies to the May 22 page. A piece of chess esoterica, the "rule" that white always moves first developed during the mid-19th century. Earlier the player with first move got to choose color. Many of the games in the 1853 International Tournament held in London actually had black moving first; by the late 1860's (Paris Tournament), the convention that the player with first move would choose white developed. Thius led to our current color assignment.
Man, I'm all about the esoterica. Thanks a bunch for this.