Automaton Chess Player & Mechanical Illusion.- Reynell (H., printer) The Famous Chess-Player, No.14, St.James's-Street, next Brooks's, broadside advertisement for "The famous Automaton", single page letterpress on laid paper with large watermark of coat-of-arms, central fold, slight creases, small piece missing from upper corner, tears with slight loss and affecting text at foot caused by red wax seal to verso, verso with ink inscription 'Lord Bishop of Dromore', 314 x 195mm., folio, Printed by H. Reynell, (No.21) Piccadilly, near the Hay-Market, [1784].

⁂ "The Turk", also known as the Mechanical Turk or Automaton Chess Player, was a fake chess-playing machine constructed in 1770 by Wolfgang von Kempelen (Hungarian author and inventor, 1734-1804). It was initially constructed to impress the Empress Maria Theresa of Austria, and following a second exhibition of it to the Grand Duke Paul of Russia, Kempelen was reluctantly persuaded to undertake a European tour in 1783. It stayed a year in London in 1784, where it became something of a cause celebre and, as the advertisement states, could be viewed together with a "speaking child machine" for "half a guinea".

Extremely rare. Another very similar broadside was sold in these rooms as lot 40, September 27th 2018 (£9,000); that version advertised an admittance price of "Five Shillings" and the final paragraph stated that "Parties of at least Six Persons, may have a private Exhibition to themselves..." This present copy has the same setting for the main body of the text, but the admittance price is higher and the final paragraph reads "Eight" instead of Six Persons, suggesting this is in all likelihood a slightly earlier version, before pricing and admission criteria were adjusted downwards. ESTC records two copies, in the BL and NY Public Library, but we have been unable to determine which version of either.