Page - 62 - in Nikola Tesla and the Graz Tech

62 Fig.: Laboratory and Wardenclyffe Tower (Wikimedia Commons). Remote-controlled ships and robots In 1898 Tesla applied for a patent for remote radio control and its use in ships and vehicles. He saw the possibility of applying the principle of wireless radio transmission in a practical way. At the first electrical engineering exhi- bition at Madison Square Garden in New York, Tesla publicly introduced two remote-controlled robotic ships from which his 1.1-metre-long submarine could dive. Tesla developed remote-controlled robots for a variety of applications, and occupied himself with machines which had their own intelligence. Tesla’s dis- coveries of wireless signal transmission were precursors of the general prin- ciples of remote control of devices, as they have been employed since the 1950s in remote-controlled satellites and drones in the aerospace industry and remote control units for televisions.