An automaton is a self-operating machine. In chess, it refers to chess-playing machines that were in fact hoaxes and under the control of hidden human players. Automatons stirred up great interest in the 18th and 19th centuries and inspired early thoughts of the possibility artificial intelligence. By far, the most famous chess-playing "automaton" was The Turk, whose secret of human control was kept for a very long time. The first true automaton El Ajedrecista was created by Leonardo Torres y Quevedo.