The first cars bold enough to drive themselves

The rise of the autonomous automobile didn’t happen in a single moment. It began as a slow crawl during the Roosevelt administration — Theodore, not Franklin — with work by Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres Quevedo, born in Santa Cruz in 1852. Quevedo built a mechanical chess machine in 1914 and, earlier, pioneered remote-control systems that foreshadowed modern self-driving cars.

He called his invention the Telekino, from the Greek words for “at a distance” and “movement,” and patented it in Spain, France, and the United States. Conceived to prevent airship accidents, the Telekino sent wireless signals to a coherer receiver that converted electromagnetic waves into current, which drove electromagnets to rotate a switch and operate a servomotor.

Quevedo could issue 19 distinct commands, and in 1904 he used the system to steer a small three-wheeled vehicle from nearly 100 feet away — the earliest recorded radio-controlled vehicle.

Spain, Santa Cruz

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