In his essay, Poe asserts that a mechanical chess player would play perfectly, but Maelzel's "machine" occasionally errs, and is therefore suspect. Although it is the most famous essay on the Turk, many of Poe's hypotheses were incorrect. He also may or may not have been aware of earlier articles written in the
Baltimore Gazette where two youths were reported to have seen chess player
William Schlumberger climbing out of the machine. He did, however, borrow heavily from
David Brewster's
Letters on Natural Magic. Other essays and articles had been written and published prior to Poe's in
Baltimore,
Philadelphia, and
Boston—cities in which Poe had lived or visited before writing his essay. Poe's essay was originally published in the April 1836 issue of the
Southern Literary Messenger. Poe's essay asserts that Maelzel's troupe of automata had made at least one previous visit to
Richmond, Virginia, "some years ago", at which time they were exhibited "in the house now occupied by M. Bossieux as a dancing academy". Yet, very oddly, Poe gives no precise date or location for his own more recent encounter with Maelzel's Chess-Player, apart from stating that it was exhibited in Richmond "a few weeks ago". No known 19th- or 20th-century biography of Poe discloses when or where in Richmond he witnessed the performance of the Automaton Chess-Player. ==Importance==