Fake Automata’s influence on the Industrial Revolution

“Smith’s clientele included a Tokyo billionaire whose passion for clockwork automata

approached fetishism” Neuromancer, William Gibson.

The Turk was visited in London by Rev. Edmund Cartwright in 1784. He was so intrigued

by the Turk that he would later question whether "it is more difficult to construct a

machine that shall weave than one which shall make all the variety of moves required

in that complicated game". Cartwright would patent the prototype for a power loom

within the year.[75] Sir Charles Wheatstone, an inventor, saw a later appearance of the

Turk while it was owned by Mälzel. He also saw some of Mälzel's speaking machines,

and Mälzel later presented a demonstration of the speaking machines to the researcher

and his teenage son. Alexander Graham Bell obtained a copy of a book by Kempelen

on speaking machines after being inspired by seeing a similar machine built by Wheatstone;

Bell went on to file the first successful patent for the telephone.[2]