It all started with a magician's performance at the court of Empress Maria Theresa of Austria in the late 1760s.

Among the viewers was Wolfgang von Kempelen, a brilliant - he spoke seven languages - civil servant and inventor who left the demonstration determined to one day win her majesty's favor by outdoing the conjurer's sleight-of-hand tricks.

Von Kempelen returned to the imperial court in 1770 with "The Turk", a chess-playing automaton that looked like the upper torso of an Ottoman nobleman protruding from a wooden desk whose side panels opened to reveal whirring gears and machinery.