Mephisto was a 19th-century pseudo-automaton chess player built in London by the Alsatian artificial limb maker Charles Godfrey Gumpel (c. 1835–1921). It took some 6 or 7 years to build and was first shown in 1878 at Gumpel's home in Leicester Square, London.
Unlike earlier so-called "chess automatons" such as The Mechanical Turk and Ajeeb, which concealed a human player inside the cabinet, Mephisto was operated remotely by a chess master located in a different room and connected via a system of mechanical and electrical transmissions, leading later commentators to describe it as a "pseudo-automaton". It is most closely associated with the Hungarian-British master Isidor Gunsberg, who served as its principal operator during public exhibitions and on tour.
Description
Mephisto consisted of a life-size figure representing the mythical Mephistopheles. Dressed in elegant red velvet attire, the figure had a cloven hoof as a foot and was seated in an armchair in front of an unenclosed, open-sided table with a chessboard and pieces.
Contemporary accounts describe the figure's head and upper body as rigid. Its right arm extended over the board to "indicate" moves, while assistants manually moved the chess pieces following the operator's instructions. In 1878 the machine, with Gunsberg operating, was entered in the Counties Chess Association tournament in London. It scored sufficiently well for contemporary writers to credit it as the first "automaton" to win a formal chess event. After the close of the exposition the apparatus was dismantled; its subsequent fate and present whereabouts are unknown.
The name Mephisto was later revived by the German company Hegener & Glaser for a line of dedicated chess computers beginning in 1980. Mephisto went on to win multiple World Microcomputer Chess Championships from 1984 to 1990. Hegener & Glaser was subsequently acquired by Saitek in 1994, which continued to market standalone chess computers under the brand Mephisto.
See also
- The Turk hoax of 1769 to 1854, destroyed in fire
- Ajeeb hoax of 1868 to 1929, destroyed in fire
- El Ajedrecista of 1912, an electromechanical machine with true integrated automation, that is extant