Charles Godfrey Gümpel

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Anthony Rosenbaum, chess players . Gümpel, looking to the right with his head bowed, is the sixth man from the right in the last row.

Charles Godfrey Gümpel (or Gumpel , * 1835 , † 1921 ) was the designer of the chess machine " Mephisto ".

Life

Gümpel was born in Germany, but later lived in London . He was a mechanic and electrician and designed, among other things, orthopedic equipment. In 1892, for example, he was granted a patent for an orthosis that was supposed to keep the human upper body in the correct position.

Gümpel is portrayed in the painting Chess Players by Anthony Rosenbaum , which is located in Bodelwyddan Castle .

Mephisto

Gümpel worked on his chess machine for about six or seven years. Mephisto was introduced to the public in Gümpel's residence in Leicester Square in 1878 . In contrast to older chess machines, the chess players who operated Mephisto were probably not hidden inside the figure, but operated him from a distance. Mephisto was controlled electromagnetically. Isidor Gunsberg usually worked with the machine. At the Paris exhibition in 1889, Jean Taubenhaus used the device. Mephisto was used in a chess club set up especially for him for about ten years. It was dismantled after 1889 and nothing is known about its whereabouts. How Mephisto worked was never publicly explained in detail. The puppet that moved the chess pieces wore a red, oriental-style costume. She had a black mustache and was smiling. She sat on a chair behind the table with the chessboard, her right arm rested on the armrest of the chair. Various chess computers were later named after Mephisto . A colored pictorial representation of the chess machine has been preserved.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Tim Harding: Eminent Victorian Chess Players: Ten Biographies . McFarland, 2012, ISBN 978-0-7864-6568-2 , pp. 283-286 ( google.com ).
  2. ^ Newton's London Journal of Arts and Sciences . W. Newton, 1864, p. 365 ( google.com ).
  3. ↑ Orthosis patent from 1892 with construction drawings
  4. ^ National Portrait Gallery
  5. ↑ Martin Smith, Mr. Rosenbaum's Chess Picture. Part 2: Who's Who , November 3, 2012 on streathambrixtonchess.blogspot.de
  6. ↑ Mephisto on www.chessgames.com
  7. ↑ Bild Mephistos on chess.com
personal data
SURNAME Gümpel, Charles Godfrey
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Gumpel, Charles Godfrey
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Designer of a chess machine
DATE OF BIRTH 1835
DATE OF DEATH 1921