Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres-Quevedo uses a stationary radio remote controller to pilot a boat to more than a mile away in the Bilbao estuary. The crowd is amazed.
Nikola Tesla patented a wireless device for “controlling mechanism of moving vessels or vehicles” in 1898 and demonstrated a radio-controlled boat at New York’s Madison Square Garden the same year. Torres-Quevedo began his work as a way of testing dirigibles without risking human life. He built a prototype of his “Telekine” and obtained patents in 1902 and 1903. He could soon control a tricycle almost a hundred feet away, using a telegraph key to make it go back and forth and to steer it left and right.
He tested small boats in a Madrid pond in 1905. But the big public demonstration came in Bilbao. Torres-Quevedo stationed himself on the balcony of the yacht club. The boat, the Vizcaya, carried eight passengers. The Telekine aboard would receive radiotelegraph commands to control the Vizcaya’s electric engine. Using just a wireless telegraph station, Torres-Quevedo guided the boat from the yacht club to mid-estuary, executed turns and reverses, and brought it back in. Triumph.
Tesla notwithstanding, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers recognizes Torres-Quevedo as originator of “modern wireless remote-control operation principles.” Torres-Quevedo’s advances in dirigible engineering helped British and French armies counter aerial domination by Germany’s zeppelins during World War I. The inventor also designed the Aero Car cable ride over the Niagara Whirlpool in Canada.
The remote control you know best is for the television. The first wireless TV remote was the 1956 Zenith Space Commander, It relied on ultrasonic tones and was a big hit, even though it boosted the TV set’s price 30 percent. Ultrasonic remotes were superseded in the 1980s by infrared control.—RA