I said I was going to look into Tesla's remote controlled boat. The challenge with anything Tesla is, of course, the vast amount of stuff out there. Not so hard to sift through the printed works, but holy shit there is a mountain of it on the Internet. And Telsa is exactly the kind of guy, unfortunately, to draw wild eyed and creative thinkers to. You get my drift, not all of it is reliable, and I have pretty easy standards.
The year was 1898. The place, Madison Square Garden. In a custom made pool Tesla demonstarted a remote controlled boat. It was a homely thing, oven roaster shaped; it was hard to tell the bow from the stern which was slightly pointed. Constructed of metal and filled with batteries, wires and small electric motors, it thrilled onlookers. No one had heard of radio then, let alone witnessed the technology in action. Many thought HE controlled the boat with his mind.
The boat was over 6 feet long and heavy as all stink. Even though the device was high tech for then, all the batteries, motors and running gear weighed down the craft. It barely broke the surface. It had some cool features like running lights that the operator could control, and amazingly Tesla designed the receiver circuit to only operate on the signals from his transmitter, which is nowadays a common technology used in everything from cell phones to garage door openers.
It didn't take long for folk to go "hey, lets pack that puppy full of dynamite and drive it into the side of a ship". Tesla had, indeed, thought of this too, but war was far off for now and the navy (US and British) wouldn't bite. He did think that remote controlled craft in general were good for mankind and had originally hoped they would be used as labour saving devices. So was his death ray, oh well.
The year was 1898. The place, Madison Square Garden. In a custom made pool Tesla demonstarted a remote controlled boat. It was a homely thing, oven roaster shaped; it was hard to tell the bow from the stern which was slightly pointed. Constructed of metal and filled with batteries, wires and small electric motors, it thrilled onlookers. No one had heard of radio then, let alone witnessed the technology in action. Many thought HE controlled the boat with his mind.
The boat was over 6 feet long and heavy as all stink. Even though the device was high tech for then, all the batteries, motors and running gear weighed down the craft. It barely broke the surface. It had some cool features like running lights that the operator could control, and amazingly Tesla designed the receiver circuit to only operate on the signals from his transmitter, which is nowadays a common technology used in everything from cell phones to garage door openers.
It didn't take long for folk to go "hey, lets pack that puppy full of dynamite and drive it into the side of a ship". Tesla had, indeed, thought of this too, but war was far off for now and the navy (US and British) wouldn't bite. He did think that remote controlled craft in general were good for mankind and had originally hoped they would be used as labour saving devices. So was his death ray, oh well.
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