AUTOMATON CHESS-PLAYER. 325 



the opinion became very prevalent that the agent was a 

 magnet ; but even this supposition was excluded, for the 

 exhibitor allowed a strong and well-armed loadstone to 

 be placed upon the machine during the progress of the 

 game. Had the moving power been a magnet, the whole 

 action of the machine would have been deranged by the 

 approximation of a loadstone concealed in tlie pockets of 

 any of the spectators. 



As Baron Kempelen himself had admitted that there 

 was an illusion connected with the performance of the 

 automaton, various persons resumed the original conjecture, 

 that it was actuated by a person concealed in its interior, 

 who either played the game of chess himself, or performed 

 the moves which the exhibitor indicated by signals. A 

 Mr. J. F. Freyhere of Dresden published a book on the 

 subject in 1789, in which he endeavoured to explain, by 

 coloured plates, how the effect was produced; and he 

 concluded, " that a well-taught boy, very thin and tall of 

 his age (sufficiently so that he could be concealed in a 

 drawer almost immediately under the chess-board), agitated 

 the whole." 



In another pamphlet which had been previously pub- 

 lished at Paris in 1785, the author not only supposed that 

 the machine was put in motion by a dwarf, a famous chess- 

 player, but he goes so far as to explain the manner in 

 which he could be accommodated within the machine. 

 The invisibility of the dwarf when the doors were opened 

 was explained by his legs and thighs being concealed in 

 two hollow cylinders, while the rest of his body was out 

 of the box, and hid by the petticoats of the automaton. 

 When the doors were shut the clacks produced by the 

 swivel of a ratchet-wheel permitted the dwarf to change 

 his place and return to the box unheard ; and while the 

 machine was wheeled about the room, the dwarf had an 

 opportunity of shutting the trap through which he passed 



