Futility Closet - 170-The Mechanical Turk
Episode Date: September 18, 2017In 1770, Hungarian engineer Wolfgang von Kempelen unveiled a miracle: a mechanical man who could play chess against human challengers. In this week's episode of the Futility Closet podcast we'll meet... Kempelen's Mechanical Turk, which mystified audiences in Europe and the United States for more than 60 years. We'll also sit down with Paul Erdős and puzzle over a useful amateur. Intro: Lewis Carroll sent a birthday wish list to child friend Jessie Sinclair in 1878. An octopus named Paul picked the winners of all seven of Germany’s World Cup games in 2010. Sources for our feature on the Mechanical Turk: Tom Standage, The Turk, 2002. Elizabeth Bridges, "Maria Theresa, 'The Turk,' and Habsburg Nostalgia," Journal of Austrian Studies 47:2 (Summer 2014), 17-36. Stephen P. Rice, "Making Way for the Machine: Maelzel's Automaton Chess-Player and Antebellum American Culture," Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Third Series, 106 (1994), 1-16. Dan Campbell, "'Echec': The Deutsches Museum Reconstructs the Chess-Playing Turk," Events and Sightings, IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 26:2 (April-June 2004), 84-85. John F. Ohl and Joseph Earl Arrington, "John Maelzel, Master Showman of Automata and Panoramas," Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 84:1 (January 1960), 56-92. James W. Cook Jr., "From the Age of Reason to the Age of Barnum: The Great Automaton Chess-Player and the Emergence of Victorian Cultural Illusionism," Winterthur Portfolio 30:4 (Winter 1995), 231-257. W.K. Wimsatt Jr., "Poe and the Chess Automaton," American Literature 11:2 (May 1939), 138-151. Peggy Aldrich Kidwell, "Playing Checkers With Machines -- From Ajeeb to Chinook," Information & Culture 50:4 (2015), 578-587. Brian P. Bloomfield and Theo Vurdubakis, "IBM's Chess Players: On AI and Its Supplements," Information Society 24 (2008), 69-82. Nathan Ensmenger, "Is Chess the Drosophila of Artificial Intelligence? A Social History of an Algorithm," Social Studies of Science 42:1 (February 2012), 5-30. Martin Kemp, "A Mechanical Mind," Nature 421:6920 (Jan. 16, 2003), 214. Marco Ernandes, "Artificial Intelligence & Games: Should Computational Psychology Be Revalued?" Topoi 24:2 (September 2005), 229–242. Brian P. Bloomfield and Theo Vurdubakis, "The Revenge of the Object? On Artificial Intelligence as a Cultural Enterprise," Social Analysis 41:1 (March 1997), 29-45. Mark Sussman, "Performing the Intelligent Machine: Deception and Enchantment in the Life of the Automaton Chess Player," TDR 43:3 (Autumn 1999), 81-96. James Berkley, "Post-Human Mimesis and the Debunked Machine: Reading Environmental Appropriation in Poe's 'Maelzel's Chess-Player' and 'The Man That Was Used Up,'" Comparative Literature Studies 41:3 (2004), 356-376. Kat Eschner, "Debunking the Mechanical Turk Helped Set Edgar Allan Poe on the Path to Mystery Writing," Smithsonian.com, July 20, 2017. Lincoln Michel, "The Grandmaster Hoax," Paris Review, March 28, 2012. Adam Gopnik, "A Point of View: Chess and 18th Century Artificial Intelligence," BBC News, March 22, 2013. http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21876120 Ella Morton, "The Mechanical Chess Player That Unsettled the World," Slate, Aug. 20, 2015. "The Automaton Chess Player," Scientific American 48:7 (February 17, 1883), 103-104. Robert Willis, An Attempt to Analyse the Automaton Chess Player, of Mr. de Kempelen, 1821. "The Automaton Chess-Player," Cornhill Magazine 5:27 (September 1885), 299-306. Edgar Allan Poe, "Maelzel's Chess-Player," Southern Literary Messenger, April 1836, 318-326. You can play through six of the Turk's games on Chessgames.com. Listener mail: Nicholas Gibbs, "Voynich Manuscript: The Solution," Times Literary Supplement, Sept. 5, 2017. Annalee Newitz, "The Mysterious Voynich Manuscript Has Finally Been Decoded," Ars Technica, Sept. 8, 2017. Natasha Frost, "The World's Most Mysterious Medieval Manuscript May No Longer Be a Mystery," Atlas Obscura, Sept. 8, 2017. Sarah Zhang, "Has a Mysterious Medieval Code Really Been Solved?" Atlantic, Sept. 10, 2017. Annalee Newitz, "So Much for That Voynich Manuscript 'Solution,'" Ars Technica, Sept. 10, 2017. "Imaginary Erdős Number," Numberphile, Nov. 26, 2014. Oleg Pikhurko, "Erdős Lap Number," Mathematics Institute, University of Warwick (accessed Sept. 15, 2017). This week's lateral thinking puzzle was contributed by listener Alex Baumans, who sent this corroborating link (warning -- this spoils the puzzle). You can listen using the player above, download this episode directly, or subscribe on iTunes or Google Play Music or via the RSS feed at http://feedpress.me/futilitycloset. Please consider becoming a patron of Futility Closet -- on our Patreon page you can pledge any amount per episode, and we've set up some rewards to help thank you for your support. You can also make a one-time donation on the Support Us page of the Futility Closet website. Many thanks to Doug Ross for the music in this episode. If you have any questions or comments you can reach us at podcast@futilitycloset.com. Thanks for listening!
Transcript
Discussion (0)
Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history.
Visit us online to sample more than 9,000 quirky curiosities from Lewis Carroll's birthday
list to a clairvoyant octopus.
This is Episode 170.
I'm Greg Ross.
And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1770, Hungarian engineer
Wolfgang von Kempelen unveiled a miracle, a mechanical man who could play chess against
human challengers. In today's show, we'll meet Kempelen's Mechanical Turk, which mystified
audiences in Europe and the United States for more than 60 years. We'll also sit down with
Paul Erdős and puzzle over a useful amateur.
In the autumn of 1769, a 35-year-old Hungarian civil servant named Wolfgang von Kempelen
was summoned to the imperial court in Vienna by Maria Theresa, the Empress of Austria-Hungary,
to see a French conjurer. Kempelen was one of
Maria Theresa's senior officials. He'd made his mark in her court by translating the Hungarian
civil code from Latin to German, but as a sideline, he had a passionate interest in engineering.
One of his friends wrote that, quote, his predominant passion is invention, in which
he employs almost every moment which the duties of his situation leave at his disposal.
As he rose through the ranks, he put together a sophisticated personal workshop with all the latest scientific equipment and the
tools of a joiner, a locksmith, and a watchmaker. Elaborate mechanical toys were popular throughout
Europe at this time. Some of them were quite ingenious, and Kempelen would have seen a number
of them presented to the Empress at her court in Vienna. He'd been trained in physics, mechanics,
and hydraulics, so Maria Theresa wanted his opinion
of this French conjurer whose name was Pelletier. After the performance, the Empress asked him his
opinion as a scientific expert. He said that he believed he could build a machine that would
produce a more surprising effect with a more complete deception than anything the Empress
had just seen. Tom Standage, who's written the best history about all this, says this remark
seemed impetuous and drew laughter in the court.
The Empress challenged him to create the most impressive automaton ever seen in the courts of Europe,
and she excused him from his official duties for six months so he could do this.
He agreed and said he wouldn't return until he was ready to present a performance of his own, and then he disappeared for six months.
He presented his creation in the spring of 1770 before the Empress and a select gathering.
It was a wooden cabinet behind which sat a wooden man.
He wore a robe trimmed in ermine, loose trousers, and a turban.
His appearance suggested a Turk, and Turkish things were all the rage in Vienna at this moment.
Also, the Turkish theme might have been inspired by the fact that chess had originally come to Europe from Persia about a thousand years earlier.
The cabinet was four feet
long, two and a half feet deep, and three feet high. It sat on four brass casters so it could
be turned easily, carrying the seated figure along with it. The front of the cabinet had three doors
and beneath these was a long drawer. The figure's right arm rested on the top of the cabinet and
its eyes stared down at a large chessboard. In its left hand, it held a long pipe as if it had just finished smoking. Kempelen announced that this
was an automaton chess player. He said that before the demonstration, he would reveal its workings.
He produced a set of keys and opened the leftmost of the three doors. Behind this was a complex
arrangement of wheels, levers, and clockwork. He walked around the cabinet and opened another door
directly behind this and held a burning candle there, and the audience could just
see the candle through all the clockwork. Now he closed and locked the rear door and opened the
drawer below to reveal a set of chessmen in red and white ivory. He put these on top of the cabinet.
Then he opened the remaining two doors to reveal the rightmost two-thirds of the cabinet's interior
and, just as before, opened a door in the back and shone a candle through the open compartment. He closed all the doors,
put the cushion under the Turk's left elbow, removed the pipe from its hand, arranged the
chessmen on the board, reached into the cabinet to make a final adjustment, and put two candelabra
on the cabinet to illuminate the board. Then he announced that the automaton was ready to play
chess against any challenger. A courtier named Count Kubenzel came forward.
Kempelen explained that the automaton would have the white pieces and the first move,
that moves could not be taken back, and that it was important to put the pieces exactly
on the centers of the squares so that the automaton could grasp them correctly without
damaging its fingers.
Kempelen went to the left-hand side of the automaton, inserted a key into the aperture,
and wound the mechanism with a loud ratcheting sound.
After a pause, the wooden figure lurched into life, turned its head from side to side as
if surveying the chessboard, and moved a piece forward.
It made each move with its left hand, holding it over a piece, closing its fingers over
it, and carrying it to the new square or off the board.
Then its arm returned to the cushion and the whirring stopped.
Sometimes it moved its
head. When it attacked the opponent's queen, it would nod twice. When it put the king in check,
it would nod three times. If the opponent made an incorrect move, it would shake its head and
move the piece back to its original square and then proceed with its own move, which forced
the opponent to miss a turn. Kempelen never touched the Turk except to wind it up every 10 or 15 moves.
The Turk quickly defeated Kovenzel. As
it played further games, it became clear that it was fast and aggressive. It could beat most people
within half an hour. Kempelen got it to solve some chess puzzles, including the Knight's Tour,
which is a famous puzzle in which you put a knight down on a square on a bare board and then have to,
in 64 moves, have to visit every square on the board once, which is difficult.
The Empress was astonished at all this and delighted, and she asked Kempelen to exhibit the Turk before members of the royal
family, ministers of other countries, and other visitors to the court. The Turk became the talk
of Vienna, and it was written up in newspapers and journals overseas. Even at this early date,
there was rampant speculation as to how the illusion was achieved. One visitor said that
many observers believed that a boy was hidden inside, but that this idea seemed to be disproved when
Kempelen showed the inside of the cabinet. Also, he noted that Kempelen moved around during the
game and sometimes stood five or six feet away from the automaton, so he couldn't be directing
its play himself. Others had suggested that magnetism was involved, but Kempelen invited
visitors to bring magnets or weights of iron and apply them to the automaton as it played, and that didn't seem to have any effect.
This visitor concluded,
The Turk, even if it was an illusion, led people to reflect on the possibility of a
machine that could think. Impressive automata were increasingly common,
so it didn't seem immediately impossible that one could really play chess. But the Turk appeared to
make unplanned movements under its own initiative, which was new. How was that possible? What were
the limits? No one had really considered these questions before. Kempelen hadn't expected to
make this big a splash, but the Empress gave him an additional allowance and some engineering tasks
in addition to his duties at court. In the years that followed, he tried to distance himself from the Turk.
He insisted he was a civil servant and an engineer, not an entertainer,
and he would sometimes say it had been damaged to avoid exhibiting it.
Finally, he just dismantled it.
By the time of Maria Theresa's death in November 1780, it had been forgotten.
In September 1781, more than a decade after it first appeared,
the Turk was resurrected at the
order of Maria Theresa's successor, her son, now Emperor Joseph II, to be displayed to the Grand
Duke of Russia, who was making a tour of Europe. Kempelen spent five weeks fixing up the automaton,
and it was a great hit with the Russian visitors during their seven-week stay in Vienna.
The Grand Duke suggested that Kempelen take the automaton on a tour of Europe,
and the whole court seconded this.
Joseph offered to excuse him for two years so he could do this.
Kempelen was reluctant, but he didn't want to send someone else in his stead for fear the machine might need repairs on the road.
He didn't trust them to keep it secret, so he agreed to go.
It took several months to prepare the automaton for travel, but by the start of 1783, they were ready.
Paris and London were the chess centers of Europe, so Paris was the logical first stop. They arrived in April. Kempelen was aware that chess players
in Paris would be much stronger than those in the Viennese court, and that members of the Academy
of Sciences might want to scrutinize the mechanism. He spent a few days entertaining the court at the
Palace at Versailles, and in fact stayed there longer than he expected. It proved so popular
there. Then he went on to display the machine at Paris in May. Spectators were charged a small fee for admission, and for the first time,
members of the public could see and challenge the Turk. The French author Friedrich Melchior
von Grimm wrote to Denis Diderot, our greatest scientists and most able engineers have had no
more luck than their Austrian counterparts in discovering the means by which the automaton's
movements are directed. He was impressed that the Turk could perform the knight's tour,
something he said that even André Philidor, the greatest player in Paris, couldn't do.
While they were in Paris, Kempelen invited Benjamin Franklin to play the Turk,
and it beat him, although we don't have any details of that evening.
Reportedly, it also lost to Le Gall at the Café de la Régence and lost to Philidor,
so those are the two strongest players in Paris,
though Philidor later said that no game against a human opponent had ever fatigued him so much.
Some members of the Academy of Sciences watched the play.
They were convinced that Kempelen was influencing it,
but that this was, quote, so adroit and so well hidden
that a large number of savants who saw it at Paris were not able to divine the means by which it is done.
Like many others, they thought that the trickery was managed by magnets
or perhaps relied on children hidden in the machine.
From Paris, Kempelen went to London, where he arrived that autumn and put the Turk on display in Burlington Gardens.
A promotional book written by Kempelen's friend Karl Gottlieb von Windisch was circulated at the same time, with the provocative title Inanimate Reason.
People soon flocked to see the Turk at the price of five shillings each, and here as everywhere it inspired vigorous debate.
One incensed Englishman named Philip Thickness wrote in the Monthly Review,
that an automaton may be made to move its hand, its head, and its eyes in certain and regular motions is past all doubt,
but that an automaton can be made to move the chessmen properly as a pugnacious player in consequence of the preceding move of a stranger who undertakes to play against it is utterly impossible. Utterly impossible is in all caps. He said that must be
a simple trick. He thought a human player, perhaps a child, was concealed inside the cabinet. He
couldn't prove it, though, and his article didn't seem to damage the Turk's reputation.
There were skeptics, but there were influential believers, too. Charles Hutton, editor of the
Philosophical and Mathematical Dictionary, described the Turk as, quote, truly the greatest masterpiece of mechanics that ever
appeared in the world. Kempelen left London in the autumn of 1784 and made his way back through
Germany and then visited Amsterdam before returning home to Vienna. After two years on the road,
he stored away the Turk and went back to his duties. In time, he was promoted to privy counselor.
He didn't talk much about the automaton because, as one friend said, it was the invention, quote, on which he prides himself the least.
He often mentions it as a mere bagatelle.
But it's possible he was keeping quiet because of a book published in 1789 by Joseph Friedrich Freiherr zu Racknitz, which was the most detailed analysis yet.
Racknitz suggested that the drawer at the bottom of the cabinet didn't extend all the way to the back, which would leave a space in which a man could hide. He sent a copy of his book to Kempelen,
who said it was incorrect but refused to be drawn out any further. The Turk gathered dust in Schönbrunn
Palace in Vienna from 1785 to 1804, when Kempelen died at the age of 70. Five years later, in May
1809, Napoleon Bonaparte marched into Vienna and set up headquarters at the palace where he spent the summer. One of his visitors was Johann Nepomuk Meltzel, an inventor and musical engineer
who offered to show him a chess-playing automaton. He had bought the Turk from Kempel and Son a few
years earlier. Meltzel told Napoleon that he'd built the automaton himself. The Turk had been
out of circulation for 25 years, so that turned out to be a safe lie. And in fact, Meltzel had
reworked the mechanism a bit himself. This is the most famous encounter in all of the Torque's history.
Napoleon's valet, who was there and witnessed it, wrote,
The automaton was seated in front of a table on which a chessboard was arranged for a game.
His Majesty took a chair and, sitting down opposite the automaton, said, laughing,
Come on, comrade, here's to us two. The automaton saluted and made a sign with the hand
to the emperor as if to bid him begin. The game opened, the emperor made two or three moves,
then intentionally a false one. The automaton bowed, took up the piece, and put it back in
its place. His majesty cheated a second time, the automaton saluted again, but confiscated the piece.
That's right, said his majesty, and cheated the third time. Then the automaton shook its head,
and passing its hand over the chessboard, it upset the
whole game.
The emperor complimented the mechanician highly.
Napoleon moved on from Vienna, and Meltzel went on to other projects, but in 1818, he
set out on another tour with the Turk.
He displayed it first in Paris and then went to England.
In London, the Turk attracted large crowds.
Meltzel had modified it so that it could say Czech instead of just nodding three times.
And now it gave odds of a pawn and move to all comers, which meant that if you played against the Turk, you could now make the first move, even though you had the black pieces,
and the Turk would play without one of its pawns. But still, it won almost all its games. Meltzel
published a collection of 50 of its games from 1819 and 1820, and the Turk won 45 of those,
and that was said to be about its normal standard.
The Turk's appearance brought out the usual inquisitive skeptics. A young enterprising,
I should say, a young man named Robert Willis surreptitiously measured the cabinet with his umbrella and found that it was larger than it seemed and could probably accommodate a normal
man. He published a detailed description of what he guessed was the mechanism. Willis was only 21
at the time, but he would go on to become a professor of applied mechanics at Cambridge. His theories about the Turk didn't seem to hurt its popularity.
Another notable opponent was Charles Babbage, the English mathematician, engineer, and general
polymath. He saw the Turk play at Spring Gardens on March 6, 1819, and played against it the
following February. He wrote Automaton I in about an hour. He was sure the Turk was under human
control, but playing it did set him wondering whether a real chess-playing machine might be built. He said he, quote,
soon arrived at a demonstration that every game of skill is susceptible of being played by an
automaton. He sketched out an algorithm for playing board games with movable pieces,
including checkers and chess, the first time that such an algorithm had been devised.
He said later that chess was one of the compelling applications for his famous
analytical engine, an early computing machine that he described first in 1837.
At the end of 1825, Meltzel found himself with mounting debts and legal actions against him.
He had kind of an untidy personal life, so he sailed for America.
He arrived in New York on February 3, 1826, and put the Turk on display in the National Hotel.
Only about 100 people showed up at the first exhibition, but after that it sold out regularly regularly and they started doing two shows a day. After New York, they toured the United
States. In Boston, Meltzel met a young P.T. Barnum and told him, quote, I see that you understand the
value of the press and that is the great thing. Nothing helps the showman like the types and the
ink. A piece of advice that Barnum apparently took to heart. In Baltimore, the Turk was beaten by
Charles Carroll, the last surviving designer of the Declaration of Independence.
He was 89 years old.
The Turk may actually have thrown this game out of respect.
It was about to win when Meltzel said he needed to make an adjustment.
He knelt down and opened one of the rear doors,
and then the machine immediately made an idiotic move.
Carroll said, I think you may have favored me in this game,
but no one seemed to care.
The New York Mirror praised his victory.
In Richmond, Meltzel met 26-year-old Edgar Allan Poe, who was then a journalist. He published an
article titled Meltzel's Chess Player, in which he wrote, perhaps no exhibition of this kind has
ever elicited so general attention as the chess player of Meltzel. Wherever seen, it has been
an object of intense curiosity to all persons who think, yet the question of its modus operandi is
still undetermined. He too thought that a human player was hidden in the cabinet. Meltzel died on the road on July 21st, 1838, on the way to
Charleston. The Turk was bought for $400 by a Dr. John Kearsley Mitchell, who donated it to the
Chinese Museum, which was a collection of curiosities in Philadelphia. There it was eventually
moved into storage, where it was forgotten for 14 14 years and finally it was destroyed in a fire in 1854.
It was Mitchell's son who finally revealed the secret in a series of articles in Chess Monthly in 1857.
As Robert Willis had guessed, the cabinet did contain a human chess master who could contort himself to remain hidden while Kempelen opened these various doors at the start of each exhibition.
at the start of each exhibition.
Afterward, he would play by candlelight inside the cabinet,
observing the opponent's moves on the board above him and moving the Turk's arm through a sophisticated mechanism
that Kempelen had devised.
Several people had guessed the truth,
but none of them had got all the details right,
and the fact that the display fooled some observers
showed that an age of thinking machines was beginning.
By proposing a machine that could play chess,
Kempelen had inspired a debate over the extent
to which machines could replace human faculties, whether this intellectual game was, in Robert Wills' words,
the province of intellect alone. And this unfolded at the start of the Industrial Revolution.
Many of the questions that the Turk raised are still with us today.
Harry's is all about a great shave at a fair price,
which is why over 3 million men have switched to Harry's.
Jeff and Andy, two ordinary guys who were fed up with buying overpriced razors,
started Harry's to fix shaving.
They bought their own German factory with over 100 years of blade-making experience to ensure the highest quality,
and all of their products are backed by a 100% quality guarantee. Harry's offers their blades at half the price of
the leading five blade razor selling directly to you over the internet. Harry sent me a razor to
try and I really did like the convenience. It landed right on my doorstep and I like the blades
too. They really do give a close comfortable shave. Harry's is so confident you're going to
love their blades. They'll give you their trial shave set for free when you sign up at harrys.com slash closet. Just pay for shipping.
Claim your free trial offer from Harry's today. A $13 value for free when you sign up. You just
cover shipping. Your free trial set includes a weighted ergonomic razor handle, five precision
engineered blades with a lubricating strip and trimmer blade, a rich lathering shave gel, and a
travel blade cover. To get your free trial set, go to harrys.com slash closet right now. That's harrys.com slash closet.
We want to thank all of our listeners who wrote to us last week about the news that was published
about the Voynich Manuscript. We likely wouldn't have seen it ourselves, so we did appreciate all the updates. The Voynich Manuscript, which we discussed in episode 129, is a 15th century
illustrated document that was discovered in 1912 and that was handwritten in a mysterious alphabet.
Despite numerous attempts to decode it and various theories about it, no one has yet been able to
determine its full meaning. But on September 5th, Nicholas
Gibbs published a cover story in the Times Literary Supplement basically saying that he had solved the
mystery of the manuscript. I've had a little trouble determining exactly what qualifications
Gibbs has for making such an assertion. I've seen him described as an expert on medieval medical
manuscripts and someone whose main claim to fame
before this article was a series of books about how to write and sell television screenplays.
An article in The Atlantic says that in his long-winded article on cracking the Voynich
manuscript, he variously notes himself to be a professional history researcher, muralist, war artist, former employee of Christie's,
and descendant of the great English herbalist Thomas Frommand. Whoever Gibbs is, his article
created a fair amount of interest as he laid out his claim with a high level of detail and
self-assurance. Basically, Gibbs is claiming that the manuscript is written in Latin ligatures,
or a type of shorthand where only selected letters of words are used rather than the whole words.
The work is a woman's health manual, and there would originally have been an index with it
that would have allowed for it to be read properly, but this index was presumably lost over time.
Reactions to Gibbs's article were mixed.
Given that it was published in a respected periodical
and written with a high level of self-confidence, many people were excited about Gibbs's claim.
Ars Technica, for example, posted an article on September 8th entitled,
Mystery Solved! The Mysterious Voynich Manuscript Has Finally Been Decoded!
But no matter what you think of Gibbs's theory, he hadn't claimed to have decoded most of the
manuscripts, so this was rather overstated at best.
Still, many people took Gibbs's article and ones such as the Ars Technica one at face value.
Others, however, were less persuaded.
The Atlantic published an article entitled, Has a Mysterious Medieval Code Really Been Solved? Experts Say No.
And two days after their first positive article, Ars Technica posted an updated
article with the headline, so much for that Voynich manuscript solution, librarians would
have rebutted it in a heartbeat, says medieval scholar. The Atlantic said of the reaction to
Gibbs's theory, the criticism can be summed up as such, not much in it is truly novel, but what is
appears to be incorrect.
While the second Ars Technica article acknowledges that, unfortunately, say experts,
his analysis was a mix of stuff we already knew and stuff he couldn't possibly prove.
Ars Technica speculates that Gibbs's real aim here was to sell an idea for a TV show,
similar to the History Channel programs that we discussed last week with regard to H.H. Holmes.
What remains a question that I saw asked but not answered was why the Times Literary Supplement
had published Gibbs's article, given that it appears to be much more speculative than proven.
Yeah, it seems like it would be hard to prove a theory like that, as I understand it. If he's
saying this is all in ligatures, but there's a corresponding index that we don't have,
it would be hard to know what to make of any of that.
Right. And apparently he provided only a very small sample of what he claimed was a decoded
part of the manuscript. It was very short, and scholars say that even what he provided
didn't really work. It didn't really work with Latin. It wasn't grammatically correct
and didn't seem very convincing. So it is kind of a
question about why the Times Literary Supplement published it, and apparently some people asked
them that but hadn't gotten an answer, at least when I had looked. We also have a further update
on Erdős numbers. If you remember from episode 159, there is the original Erdős number, which
is a measure of how closely connected someone is
to someone who has authored an academic paper with the great mathematician Paul Erdős.
In episode 161, we learn that there are more whimsical versions of this, such as Erdős-Bacon
numbers that add in connections to the actor Kevin Bacon. Morley Ravie wrote,
Hello again from Singapore. I just listened to your episode about Paul Erdős
and wanted to mention re-Erdős numbers
that a mathematician once had an imaginary Erdős number.
Imaginary not in the sense of completely made up,
but in the mathematical sense of square root of negative one.
And Morley sends a number file video that explained the situation.
Six authors, including Erdős,
contributed to a
paper and decided to publish it under the pseudonym GWPEC, which was an acronym made from the initials
of their last names. Just as an aside, one of those authors, Dan Kleitman, a professor at MIT,
liked the name so much that he began publishing some of his own papers under the name GWPEC.
After publishing a few papers, Peck was then sent papers to review for mathematical journals,
which Kleitman did, including reviewing, as Peck, some of his own papers.
Doesn't seem quite kosher.
But Doug West, the W in G.W. Peck, had only ever published with Erdős as part of the pseudonym,
so he was given an Erdős number of I, or the imaginary number.
When West decided to publish a paper with Jerry Griggs, who had never directly published with
Erdős, it was decided that then Griggs' Erdős number would be one plus I.
Years later, West did finally publish a paper with Erdős himself, using their real names,
so then his Erdős number converted to one,
and Griggs' number became the conventional one plus one or two.
So if you're now thinking,
well, we've covered regular Erdős numbers
and imaginary Erdős numbers,
and even Erdős combined with some different pop cultural entities,
what could possibly be left?
And, well, what's left is Erdős lap numbers.
Jordan Barnes let us know about this kind of Erdős number, which is explained by Oleg Pekorko,
a professor of mathematics at the University of Warwick in England. Jordan said,
I met Oleg Pekorko a few months ago when he spoke at my university. It slipped my mind to secure an
Erdős lap number of three while I had the chance.
Although if it had occurred to Jordan, he would have had to have asked Professor Pecorco if he could sit in his lap.
By Pecorco's definition, Erdős is the only person with an Erdős lap number of zero.
In order to get a lap number, you have to sit in the lap of a person who has a lap number,
and then your number is that person's number plus one.
Pecorco says that proof in a form of a photo
or a notary certification is required for any claims.
So you can't just claim to have been in someone's lap.
And as best as I can tell,
it seems that this lap number idea got its origin
in the photos of various children
sitting in Erdős' lap.
So on his page, Picorco has a photo of a girl
sitting on Erdős' lap and then a photo of his largeorco has a photo of a girl sitting on Erdős' lap, and then a photo
of his large self awkwardly perched on the lap of a much smaller woman, who is the grown version of
the girl in the photo. Thus, Picorco has a lap number of two, which is why Jordan missed his
opportunity to get a number of three. Do you know what a lap circle is? No. It's when a group of
like 20 people stand in a ring, and if they all turn to their left and sit
down then everyone is sitting in a lap oh but there's no foundation there's no bottom to it
i'm wondering what would happen if one of those people had an erdős lap number because
huh it goes around in the circle anyway go around in a circle well um actually there's a little bit
of a circular thing uh on picorco's site where he shows a photo of a girl sitting in Erdős' lap when she's seven, and then Erdős sitting in her lap when she's in her 30s.
Like the universe would just collapse or something.
It makes a circle for itself.
He actually does have a number of photos of people self-consciously sitting on his lap,
including one that appears to be on a bus with the caption of,
sometimes I'm recognized even in public transport.
So he seems to have a very sought after lap.
Apparently, there's an open question of whether there exists a person who has both a regular Erdős number and an Erdős lap number of one.
There is a possibility that the Hungarian mathematician
Janos Pach holds this honor, though apparently when asked, he was unable to submit the required
proof of his ever being on Erdős' lap and could only reply that it was a reasonable conjecture
that it had happened. Maybe he wrote a paper while sitting in his lap. Oh my. You could do
both at the same time. So thanks so much
to everyone who writes into us. We really appreciate hearing what our listeners have to say.
So if you have anything you'd like to send, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com.
It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him an
odd sounding situation and he has to figure out what's going on, asking only yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from
Alex Baumans, who got the idea from something he heard on the podcast, No Such Thing as a Fish.
Alex's puzzle is, someone is offering a service that will have to be suspended
once the person doing it gets skilled enough at it. Why?
once the person doing it gets skilled enough at it.
Why?
Someone is offering a service that will have to be suspended
once the person doing it gets skilled enough at it.
All right.
So the person who's offering the service
is not the person who's performing it?
Is that right?
Yeah, that's actually correct.
There are two different people there.
Skilled enough at it okay um so the person who's doing the service is not skilled at it is that just through inexperience
yes okay and they'll just gradually with experience naturally get better at it yes
and at that point it won't be valuable correct that's exactly right does this have to do with
entertainment like it's entertaining to watch someone who's not good at something no that's And at that point, it won't be valuable anymore. Correct. That's exactly right. Does this have to do with entertainment?
Like it's entertaining to watch someone who's not good at something?
No.
That's a good guess.
I don't want to have to guess what the service is because that's going to take a long time.
Okay.
The person who's – is there anyone else involved besides these two people?
No.
And I'll tell you, it's a guy and his mom.
A guy is offering his mom to perform a service.
Really?
That will have to be suspended once the mom gets skilled enough at it.
Is this true?
Is this a real?
This is true.
It's a real thing.
Okay.
Wow.
What could you get your mom to do that people so people are paying for this service
presumably it's being offered i can't say if they have any customers or not
and she's doing it would you say she's doing it badly whatever it is um inexpertly um
the the service that's being offered yeah in some ways you'd say she's she's doing just what's being advertised and and
part part of the service that they're offering requires her to be an expert
which is the whole reason why the service will need to be suspended if she ever
gets too experienced at it
okay is this you say this this wouldn't be called entertainment.
Correct.
I'm just running through the things you could get your mom to do.
It's definitely a service.
Is his identity or hers important?
No.
Is the location or time period important?
I would say it has to be pretty much the present day.
It couldn't be too far into the past.
Does that have to do with the internet or...
It does. Is she performing the do with the internet? It does.
Is she performing the service on the internet?
Yes.
Does that have to do with testing somehow?
Yes.
Like, I don't quite know what I'm asking.
But you're doing great.
Testing a service,
because I'm just thinking if...
Yeah.
If someone's just designing like an interface
or a service or something,
and someone wants to test it, and her demographic is the right one that they hope to market this to,
they'd want to try it out with her, a sort of user experience thing, to see how well she actually uses it.
Yes.
But if she gets too familiar with it, then she's not representative anymore.
Yeah.
That's actually close enough.
Alex says that on No Such Thing as a Fish, they mentioned the web service, The User is My Mom, which evaluates the user
friendliness of websites by having the titular mom test the sites, at which one of the panel
members remarked that the value of the service would decrease if the service caught on and the
mom in question got more proficient at using the internet. Right, because then she's not.
Right, exactly.
Representative.
And so I went to the website,
The User Is My Mom,
and the website says,
My mom tutors high school students
and likes quilting and hiking.
She yells at her computer,
doesn't know what a Twitter is,
and struggles to find windows she's minimized.
You should design for users who are unlike you.
If they can't understand your site
or read it with ease,
they will struggle and give up.
Your mom loves you too much to give you honest feedback.
My mom thinks you're probably a lovely person but may not like your work.
She'll try to use your website and tell you how she really feels, which is kind of a good idea, right?
Yeah, that's really useful.
You want somebody who's not proficient, but if she becomes proficient, then the service will be worthless.
Yeah, and who represents the kind of person who you're aiming for. Yeah. So thanks to Alex for that puzzle. We really appreciate the
puzzle submissions that we get. So please keep them coming. We try to use as many of them as
we can on the show. So if you have one you'd like to send in, please send it to podcast
at futilitycloset.com. That's our show for today. If you're looking for more Futility Closet,
check out the Futility Closet books on Amazon
or visit the website at futilitycloset.com
where you can sample more than 9,000 bite-sized diversions.
Or you can join our Patreon campaign
where you can help support the show
and get outtakes, more lateral thinking puzzles,
updates on Sasha the podcat,
and hear extra discussions on some of the stories. You can check that out at patreon.com slash futilitycloset Thank you. email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. Our music was written and performed
by Greg's phenomenal brother, Doug Ross.
Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.