VON KEMPELEN, Wolfgang (1734 – 1804). Patent Application For a Steam-Powered Device. One manuscript page, nearly filled both recto and verso, outlining in the most basic of terms the “entirely new” idea Von Kempelen wishes to patent “a new reaction machine, set in motion by fire, air, water, or any fluid, and applicable to any other machine or engine requiring a moving power in any direction whatever.” SIGNED in Von Kempelen’s hand, “Wolfgang de Kempelen,” and dated below the autograph on March 5, 1784 in the hand of Lord Sydney, a Secretary of State to the British monarch. Together with a second sheet in the hand and signed by one “Kenyon,” most likely patent examiner or advisor, dated March 6, 1784. Accompanied by later drawings of the invention and an analysis by magician, craftsman, and historian John McKinven. Rare; the first autograph of this celebrated inventor we have encountered. See Jay’s Journal of Anomalies, V4 N4. Von Kempelen was a civil servant to the Austrian empire for forty-three years, but his legacy is as an inventor (of speaking machines, water pumps, and steam engines), scientist (who studied speech), and perhaps most significantly, as the creator of the Automaton Chess Player, one of the most fabled illusions-cum-hoaxes of the eighteenth and nineteenth century. The “Turk,” was apparently a thinking machine that could play chess and best nearly any opponent, even though it was apparently controlled by a network of gears and clockwork mechanisms inside the cabinet on which the figure and board were displayed.