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This is part of a longer piece I’m doing on Man in the Machine—Early Days of Man-Machine Singularity
Continuing from yesterday on Poe’s untitled books in “The Raven”, and making my way backwards through his Collected Works (from his criticism in volume XI to his short essays in volume X), I found an extraordinary piece on computers and a chess-playing machine. Poe addresses a touring wonder called the Maelzel Chess-Playing Machine, which theoretically was a stand-alone device which thought and played the game, beating all-comers. (The version of the works that I own was published by Harper’s around the turn of the century—they didn’t bother to date their own work or give any references to the origins of Poe’s, which is awful The essay1 though originally appeared as Edgar Allan Poe, “Maelzel’s Chess-Player” in the Southern Literary Messenger, April 1836, 2:318-326.)
The machine was actually in its 65th year or so on tour, starting out life with Baron Kempelen, the original inventor of the device in 1769. Maelzel was a shuckster who happened to be one of the machine’s final owners–touring with it in America in the 1830’s–before the thing burned to bits in 1854.
But before he deals with the innards of the automaton, Poe writes on its history, and touches on some very deep understanding of the Babbage Difference Engine, “computers”, and thinking machines. This is especially interesting because the Babbage machines hadn’t yet been given wide public conversation—that would come in 1843 with Babbage’s somewhat unlikely bulldog, Lady Ada Lovelace, who published an account of his work in Taylor’s Scientific Memoirs. Poe’s work predates this by seven years, though
Lovelace’s commentary is far more robust, more mathematical, and longer and deeper2. Beautiful, even. (For example: “We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.”)
Poe states the difference between Babbage’s machine and a thinking machine. First up, his paragraph on Babbage’s engine, rearranged for easier consumption:
(1) “Arithmetical or algebraical calculations are, from their very nature, fixed and determinate.
(2) Certain data being given, certain results necessarily and inevitably follow.
(3) These results have dependence upon nothing, and are influenced by nothing but the data originally given.
(4) And the question to be solved proceeds, or should proceed, to its final determination, by a succession of unerring steps liable to no change, and subject to no modification.”
The thinking machine (chess-player) occurs later in the same paragraph:
(1) “But from the first move in the game of chess no especial second move follows of necessity. In the algebraical question, as it proceeds towards solution, the certainty of its operations remains altogether unimpaired. The second step having been a consequence of the data, the third step is equally a consequence of the second, the fourth of the third, the fifth of the fourth, and so on, and not possibly otherwise, to the end.
(2) But in proportion to the progress made in a game of chess, is the uncertainty of each ensuing move. A few moves having been made, no step is certain.
(3) Different spectators of the game would advise different moves. All is then dependent upon the variable judgment of the players.
(4) Now even granting (what should not be granted) that the movements of the Automaton Chess-Player were in themselves determinate, they would be necessarily interrupted and disarranged by the indeterminate will of his antagonist.
(5) There is then no analogy whatever between the operations of the Chess-Player, and those of the calculating machine of Mr. Babbage…”
[The full quote is below as well as the link for the entire piece.]
This is an interesting and fundamental understanding of the differences between a calculating device and a computer capable of iterative deduction. I think also that both he and Lady Lovelace thought of the Babbage machine in terms of an added, extra intelligence for the human brain.
After dealing with the machine’s history, and after looking at other explanations on how the thing could work, Poe delivers his conclusion: that the machine wasn’t a machine after all, and that it could not function in this way unless it was being guided by a human inside the machine, which in fact, of course, it was. Even after displaying the internal clockworks of the device, whoever it was exhibiting the machine would open and close the three doors covering the machine’s inner workings would do so in such a way that a small person could scoot back and forth to avoid detection, all of the exhibition being done at a safe distance After that, the confederate would follow the game on his own board after hearing the moves announced by the showman, and then move the arm of the automaton via levers and such to produce his move, the taking of pieces done by Maelzel. (How this went undetected for so long is a sacred mystery. It would seem as though someone at some point would’ve seen a faint light of a candle coming form inside the box, or smoke, or something.) The machine was originally designed for a brilliant Polish cavalryman who lost both legs in combat and was not above this deception. Poe’s unraveling of the story and display of reasoning and getting to this conclusion is a pretty powerful display.
It is interesting to note here that, without going all-academic about it, it seems to me that Babbage’s work on the computer passed without mention in the experiences of the earliest computer pioneers of the 1930’s-1950’s. At least I don’t think I’ve ever seen mention of Babbage in any way, at least through the construction of UNIVAC II. And so we have an instance of someone being recognized as the founding father of something without actually exerting any influence on anyone else working in that that field’s early future. This is not the case with another person who actually did have an influence on those who followed him but has never received full public recognition for his efforts—that would be Vannevar Bush and his MEMEX as the precursor to the internet. I’ve never looked for Poe’s name in conjunction with modern computing history (outside of cryptology), though I have a sneaking suspicion that if Babbage wasn’t there then neither would Poe.
NOTES
1. The paragraph in its entirety:
But if these machines were ingenious, what shall we think of the calculating machine of Mr. Babbage? What shall we think of an engine of wood and metal which can not only compute astronomical and navigation tables to any given extent, but render the exactitude of its operations mathematically certain through its power of correcting its possible errors? What shall we think of a machine which can not only accomplish all this, but actually print off its elaborate results, when obtained, without the slightest intervention of the intellect of man? It will, perhaps, be said, in reply, that a machine such as we have described is altogether above comparison with the Chess-Player of Maelzel. By no means — it is altogether beneath it — that is to say provided we assume (what should never for a moment be assumed) that the Chess-Player is a pure machine, and performs its operations without any immediate human agency. Arithmetical or algebraical calculations are, from their very nature, fixed and determinate. Certain data being given, certain results necessarily and inevitably follow. These results have dependence upon nothing, and are influenced by nothing but the data originally given. And the question to be solved proceeds, or should proceed, to its final determination, by a succession of unerring steps liable to no change, and subject to no modification. This being the case, we can without difficulty conceive the possibility of so arranging a piece of mechanism, that upon starting it in accordance with the data of the question to be solved, it should continue its movements regularly, progressively, and undeviatingly towards the required solution, since these movements, however complex, are never imagined to be otherwise than finite and determinate. But the case is widely different with the Chess-Player. With him there is no determinate progression. No one move in chess necessarily follows upon any one other. From no particular disposition of the men at one period of a game can we predicate their disposition at a different period. Let us place the first move in a game of chess, in juxtaposition with the data of an algebraical question, and their great difference will be immediately perceived. From the latter — from the data — the second step of the question, dependent thereupon, inevitably follows. It is modeled by the data. It must be thus and not otherwise. But from the first move in the game of chess no especial second move follows of necessity. In the algebraical question, as it proceeds towards solution, the certainty of its operations remains altogether unimpaired. The second step having been a consequence of the data, the third step is equally a consequence of the second, the fourth of the third, the fifth of the fourth, and so on, and not possibly otherwise, to the end. But in proportion to the progress made in a game of chess, is the uncertainty of each ensuing move. A few moves having been made, no step is certain. Different spectators of the game would advise different moves. All is then dependent upon the variable judgment of the players. Now even granting (what should not be granted) that the movements of the Automaton Chess-Player were in themselves determinate, they would be necessarily interrupted and disarranged by the indeterminate will of his antagonist. There is then no analogy whatever between the operations of the Chess-Player, and those of the calculating machine of Mr. Babbage, and if we choose to call the former a pure machine we must be prepared to admit that it is, beyond all comparison, the most wonderful of the inventions of mankind. Its original projector, however, Baron Kempelen, had no scruple in declaring it to be a “very ordinary piece of mechanism — a bagatelle whose effects appeared so marvellous only from the boldness of the conception, and the fortunate choice of the methods adopted for promoting the illusion.” But it is needless to dwell upon this point. It is quite certain that the operations of the Automaton are regulated by mind, and by nothing else. Indeed this matter is susceptible of a mathematical demonstration, a priori. The only question then is of the manner in which human agency is brought to bear. Before entering upon this subject it would be as well to give a brief history and description of the Chess-Player for the benefit of such of our readers as may never have had an opportunity of witnessing Mr. Maelzel’s exhibition
–The Maelzel essay:
–And here as well.
2) Ada Lovelace writing on the computer “program” from her extensive “Notes” section in her translation of Menabrea’s work on Babbage, appearing in Scientific Memoirs, Selections from The Transactions of Foreign Academies and Learned Societies and from Foreign Journals, edited by Richard Taylor, F.S.A.,Vol III London: 1843, Article XXIX. “Sketch of the Analytical Engine invented by Charles Babbage Esq.”
“The distinctive characteristic of the Analytical Engine, and that which has rendered it possible to endow mechanism with such extensive faculties as bid fair to make this engine the executive right-hand of abstract algebra, is the introduction into it of the principle which Jacquard devised for regulating, by means of punched cards, the most complicated patterns in the fabrication of brocaded stuffs. It is in this that the distinction between the two engines lies. Nothing of the sort exists in the Difference Engine. We may say most aptly that the Analytical Engine weaves algebraical patterns just as the Jacquard-loom weaves flowers and leaves.”
