Televisions change, technologies change, but there are interactions that last despite the passage of years, decades and even centuries. An example of this is the remote controller, which has historically allowed us to interact with devices from a distance, although what we currently know is very different from the first concept of remote control.
Although televisions did not become more common in the last decades of the 20th century, the concept of the remote controller appeared much earlier. Specifically, in 1901. And a fact that you may not know is that one of the pioneers of the remote control was a Spaniard, the engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo.
The controller anticipated the televisions
The history of the remote control dates back, as we said, to the first years of the last century. In 1903, the inventor, mathematician and engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo (1852-1936) conceived, built and patented the first remote control in history.
He called it Telekino, and as one might think It is far from the controls for televisions and other devices we see now. Miniaturization was not a reality until much later and the Telekino took up an entire table.
Telekino in Abra. Image: Torresquevedo.org
Of course, the Telekino was not created with the idea of controlling televisions remotely, which in reality did not become a reality almost until the incorporation of the cathode ray tube (with the push from Telefunken and other manufacturers). The idea was to control airships without anyone being in danger in the tests, but finally he tried it with boats as they recalled in the written edition of The Country in 2007, when the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) recognized the invention by including it in its official list of milestones in the history of engineering.
It was the first time that a Spanish creation became part of this list, in which we find inventions by Benjamin Franklin, Alessandro Volta and Guglielmo Marconi among others. Telekino, as you may have deduced, comes from TV (from ancient Greek, “far”, meaning “at a distance”, “remotely”) and kinein (also from the Greek, “movement”), by the way.
IEEE Recognition Plaque. Image: YouTube
We already talked about Telekino in Xataka precisely because of this historical recognition, also to remember that at the time it was not highly praised. In fact, Torres Quevedo himself would abandon the project as he did not receive sufficient support.
The valuable legacy of Torres Quevedo
One of the prototypes of the Telekino is located in the Torres-Quevedo Museum, in the Higher Technical School of Civil, Canal and Port Engineers of the Polytechnic University of Madrid. And thanks to a short (virtual) visit to that museum for the centenary of one of the Spanish engineer’s inventions we can discover more of them, also very relevant.
Torres Quevedo is credited with nothing more and nothing less than the first Spanish airship, as well as the first ferry suitable for transporting people (or in other words, an open cable car for people). The invention was patented in 1887, and it would not be until 30 years later when it materialized, being launched on Mount Ulía in San Sebastián in 1907.
Compensation also came in the form of international export, since the system reached neither more nor less than to Niagara Falls. Thus, the call Spanish Aerocar It continues to operate today in the well-known region and celebrated its centenary in 2016, having completed more than 10 million transports without recording incidents.
Torres Quevedo was also a precursor of modern computing with his Ajedrecista, considered the first chess computer game, and the electromechanical arithmometer, a calculator accompanied by a typewriter, a precursor to digital calculators.
This article was originally published on Xataka a few years ago, and we have recovered it from the archive.
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