S. Gosnell, Printer, Little Queen Street, London. OBSERVATIONS ON THE Automaton CHESS  PLAYER, NOW EXHIBITED IN LONDON , AT 4, SPRING GARDENS. BY AN OXFORD GRADUATE. ——ut speciosa dehinc miracula promat.— Hor. London: PRINTED FOR J. HATCHARD, NO. 190, OPPOSITE ALBANY, PICCADILLY; AND SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS. 1819. Price One Shilling. London: PRINTED FOR J. HATCHARD, NO. 190, OPPOSITE ALBANY, PICCADILLY; AND SOLD BY ALL THE BOOKSELLERS. 1819. Price One Shilling. Table of Contents 1.PREFACE. 2

The science of mechanics is one of those in which the ingenuity of modern artists appears with superior advantage. The ancients, with the single exception of Archimedes, had but an imperfect knowledge of the mysteries of this science, as their attempts in the construction of instruments for marking time, and of the organ, sufficiently prove. This inferiority may be accounted for upon the principle, that the highest discoveries in mechanics do not depend upon the capacity, however enlarged, of an

The celebrated piece of mechanism, called the Automaton Chess Player, was the invention of Wolffgang de Kempelen, a Hungarian gentleman, Aulic Counsellor to the Royal Chamber of the domains of the Emperor in Hungary. His genius for mechanics appeared in early life; and when matured by study, and experimental observation to which the leisure that his employment afforded him, was chiefly devoted, displayed itself in various inventions and improvements of great public utility. Being at Vienna, in t