A modern replica of the Turk, a chess-playing automaton that defeated Benjamin Franklin, chided Napoléon Bonaparte for cheating, and enchanted the elites of the 18th and 19th centuries. $1.5 Million ...

The inside story of an ingenious chess-playing machine that thrilled crowds, terrified opponents, and won like clockwork. One autumn day in 1769, a 35-year-old civil servant was summoned to the ...

Atlas Obscura on Slate is a blog about the world’s hidden wonders. Like us on Facebook and Tumblr, or follow us on Twitter. Warnings over the perils of artificial intelligence arms races have made ...

One or two hundred years from now, some writer will produce a study of the mania that overcame stock traders in the 1990s, when ignorance of the true capabilities of Internet technology led to wild ...

In the spring of 1997, a supercomputer built by a team of IBM scientists stunned the world by beating grandmaster Garry Kasparov, considered one of the greatest chess players in history. Deep Blue, as ...