Clockwork Game

In 1769, the court of Empress Maria Theresia witnessed one of that era'smost amazing feats of engineering: a machine that could play chess. Artfullyconstructed by a Hungarian nobleman named Wolfgang von Kempelen, thechess-machine played a unique game against each opponent, far surpassing theabilities of all its fellow automata. Throughout its eighty-five year career, audiences across Europe and the Americas flocked to see the mechanical marvelseemingly capable of human intelligence; Napoleon, Charles Babbage, and BenjaminFranklin were among its challengers, and Edgar Allen Poe wrote an essayattempting to explain how it worked. Despite its demise over a hundred fiftyyears ago, its mystery continues to fascinate, and its audience's reaction toits Orientalist trappings casts fresh light on our present sense of the'exotic'.Written and Illustrated by Jane Irwin, author of the Vögeleingraphic novels, Clockwork Game retells the true story of the world'sfirst chess-playing automaton, blending reality and fiction into a singulargraphic novel.