"This is Tom Standage's third pocket-sized book delving into the history of science and engineering, and yet again he has found a subject that is not only fascinating, but which also resonates with contemporary issues. In ', Standage explored the development of the telegraph, which permitted long-distance instantaneous communication for the first time. … In The Neptune File , Standage explained how in the 19th century a new unseen planet was discovered because of its gravitational tugging, which caused Uranus to deviate from its predicted path. … Now we have The Mechanical Turk, the story of the 18th-century automaton that convinced everyone that a machine could play world-class chess, a feat that was only truly achieved in the last decade. Standage reveals how our ancestors reacted to this first apparent example of artificial intelligence. He explains how the machine actually worked, and he brings us up to date with the terrible moment when a computer beat , the world chess champion."