The chess playing automatons. And hoaxes. Edgar Allan Poe was involved with exposing the Turk, the most famous. Mephisto did not have a human player inside, but was controlled remotely. Eventually a device was built which could actually play chess.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechanical_Turk
https://www.history.com/news/how-a-phony-18th-century-chess-robot-fooled-the-world
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mephisto_(automaton)
http://chessforallages.blogspot.com/2018/03/mephistogunsberg-cdv.html
Second link is auction price for image above. A listing of top chess-related auction prices. Ricky Jay had a bunch of that kind of thing in his collection, and I have his book of Jay's Journal of Anomalies, which has a chapter on the Turk.
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