A few minutes ago, I was searching for something to watch. I flipped through the channels on my TV with the remote control. It made me wonder.
Who? What? Where? When? The remote control.
It happened on September 25. In 1906. And it happened on the waterfront in Bilbao, Spain.
A crowd gathered to watch something that seemed almost impossible. They all stood there looking at a small boat in the harbor. There was no one at the helm. No ropes attached. And certainly, there was no visible connection to the shore. Just a boat on the water.
And then? He stood there beside that crowd on the shore. The Spanish inventor Leonardo Torres Quevedo. He began operating a device he called the Telekino.
The Telekino. Remarkable for 1906. It used radio signals. And those signals were what Quevedo used to send commands through the air. The unmanned boat responded to that chit-chat. And with that? The boat turned and changed direction. Quevedo then used the Telekino to guide the boat along. It followed his instructions as if an invisible hand was guiding it.
The people on shore went bonkers, I bet. To those spectators, the whole ordeal must have looked like magic. The world’s first remote control.
Today, we think nothing of unlocking our cars with a key fob. People are flying drones every which way. All of them are guided from hundreds of feet away. And as I mentioned, our TVs. Where would we be without those remote controls?
But in 1906, the idea of controlling a machine wirelessly was revolutionary.
The Telekino is widely regarded as one of the world’s first practical wireless remote-control systems. Torres Quevedo had patented the invention a few years earlier, and the successful public demonstration in Bilbao proved that radio signals could reliably control machines from a distance.
He was a smart guy. His ideas went way beyond boats. He imagined remote-controlled vehicles that could perform dangerous tasks without putting human lives at risk.
He was ahead of his time. His ideas would filter into technologies that we use today. Guided missiles, robotics, drones, autonomous vehicles, and countless wireless devices.
So, there is our good pal, Leonardo Torres Quevedo. The man with the signal.
Every time we use a remote control, we’re benefiting from a concept first brought to life by good old Leo and his remarkable Telekino over 120 years ago.
Now I must go and use mine to flip through a million shows on my Roku.
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“The scientist is not a person who gives the right answers. He’s one who asks the right questions.”
— Claude Lévi-Strauss
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“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited, whereas imagination embraces the entire world.”
— Albert Einstein
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“What is now proved was once only imagined.”
— William Blake
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“Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton asked why.”
— Bernard Baruch
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