Today in 1906, Spanish inventor Leonardo Torres y Quevedo demonstrated the Telekino in the port of Bilbao, guiding a boat from the shore with commands transmitted by radio.
IEEE:
Torres Quevedo started to develop the idea of a remote control around 1901 or 1902, as a way of testing his airships without risking human lives. He was the first person to lay down the modern remote control operation principles, which he expressed in a prototype that he patented in 1903 under the name Telekine. This term came from two Greek words: tele (far away, in the distance) and kine (force, movement), resulting together in “movement at a distance,” which is basically what the inventor was trying to achieve.
A prolific and versatile inventor, Quevedo’s fields of interests included mechanics, aeronautics, and automata. His Whirlpool Aero Car has been soaring over the Niagara Gorge since 1916. In 1911, Torres made and successfully demonstrated a chess-playing robot for the end game of king and rook against king. This chess automaton was fully automatic, with electrical sensing of the pieces on the board and what was in effect a mechanical arm to move its own pieces. Britannica says “it demonstrated the capability of machines to be programmed to follow specified rules (heuristics) and marked the beginnings of research into the development of artificial intelligence.”
In 1920, Torres demonstrated a second chess automaton, which used magnets underneath the board to move the pieces. Like a number of his other inventions, this one still exists and is still operational.