The Robot Boat of Nikola Tesla Comes to Life

In 1898, six years before the Wright brothers flew, Nikola Tesla, a Serbian-born American immigrant, designed and built a pair of radio controlled, robot boats. He applied for and was granted patent number 613,809 “Method of and Apparatus for Controlling Mechanism of Moving Vessels or Vehicles” by the US Patent Office for these boats.

The craft were constructed of iron, powered by a electric battery of his own design, and equipped with a radio-mechanical receiver that accepted commands from a wireless transmitter. The boats were equipped with a large whip antenna, a modular space that could carry a charge, diving rudders, a prop and electric running lights that could all be remotely controlled.

Tesla demonstrated the vessels to a shocked crowd in an indoor pool at Madison Square Garden in New York City. The crowd was amazed how Tesla, always a showman, maneuvered his six-foot-long boat in patterns through the water, and then stopped and started the craft. He even had the forethought to equip his boats with a crude logic gate which prevented them from being taken over by another transmitter other than his own. The craft alarmed those in the crowd who saw it and who claimed it to be everything from magic and telepathy to being piloted by a trained monkey hidden inside.

The same 110 years old electronic robot boat Tesla called telautomaton has now been rebuilt by the Nikola Tesla Museum in Belgrade. The boat can sail for up to 12 hours and the museums worldwide are looking to buy its replica.

Due to the large interest of both domestic and international public, Nikola Tesla Museum is getting ready to show Tesla’s magic and mysterious remotely-controlled robot boat once again on December 5, on the Museum Day. This miracle boat was exhibited during the past summer for the first time, with more than 4,000 people seeing it on Belgrade’s Museum Night.

Tesla Indeed Invented the 21st Century

The builder of Tesla’s remotely-guided boat designed in 1898, is Radomir Putnik, an engineer from the town near Belgrade, Zemun.

- This is Tesla’s original boat, constructed according to his drafts and exclusively out of the materials which were available 110 years ago. It is composed of some 300 parts we created manually and were putting them together for the full nine months. In order to make these parts, we also had to construct the special tools. And we used cables with leather insulation as conductors, just like the ones Tesla had. The boat is 1.10 meters long and 38 centimeters high. It can even sail in the Ada Ciganlija Lake [in Belgrade], and throughout the day, – Putnik, the chief engineer on the project told Vecernje Novosti.

In order to construct the boat, the team of experts first needed to decipher and figure out Tesla’s notes. This unique genius had a habit of recording only the rough sketches of his ideas, while keeping the essence of the each new invention in the head. In the same way the idea of a remotely-controlled robot ship was roughly sketched as an idea to have the transmitter which sends a signal via the receiver on the boat, and under the condition that both signals get through, the engine would turn on and the propeller would start rotating.

- Tesla first invented wireless transmission of the energy and signals, and then the command for the ship. Namely, he came up with the electronic “I” logic circuit, which works in two frequencies. This circuit will not run the motor unless it recognizes it in the other frequency, – Putnik explains.

Tesla’s “I” circuit is today built in all the computers as a miniature chip, which contains the system of the transfer of electronic impulses, which is just one of the ways Nikola Tesla had stepped into the 21st century at the end of the 19th.

“Such a Machine Should Have Organs…”

A six-member team had dealt with the problem of deciphering the enigma, including academician Aleksandar Marinčić, engineers Jasmina Zečević, Nenad Spasić, Zoran Ristić, Radomir Putnik, and the mechanic Bane Juranović.

The work included scientific research, experiments and the use of modern and special type of equipment.

The model of Tesla boat was realized based on the description of his patent number 613,809, from 1898, titled “Method of and Apparatus for Controlling Mechanism of Moving Vessels or Vehicles”. The second part of the invention was patented under the number 725,605 and the title “The Signaling System”.

Ship constructors have made the transmitter and the receiver of the signal, a special ball with the electric motor, which gets turned on when the signal enters the ship command. Keel and hull of the ship are made of the clear clirite, and rotor and stator are made of lead and metal plates, and the copper wire. They fill the battery which powers the motor, which turns the propeller, enabling the ship to sail for 12 hours at least.

- With this invention Tesla had practically founded the automatics. He was saying: “Such a machine should have the driving force, the organs for the movement, organs of control and one or more of the sensory organs, which would be set in motion by the external stimuli,” – director of the Tesla Museum Vladimir Jelenković said.

According to Vecernje Novosti, the remotely-controlled ship is even today generating great interest among the scientists, academies and museums around the world.

- The preview of Tesla ship had caused great interest of the scientific audience, and we were invited by the Conference of European Museums to present this original project to the rest of Europe. We have also been asked to display the project on the site of the Association of the Museums of Central Europe. The interest was expressed for our museum to produce several replicas and sell them, or trade them for some other scientific works from the museums abroad, – director Jelenković said.

Pentagon Swipes Tesla’s Patent

Academik Aleksandar Marinčić said that Tesla’s perfected system of the wireless transfer of commands was presented in the United States at the end of 19th century, but it wasn’t met with the enthusiasm on behalf of American Army and Navy, to which it was offered for commercialization.

Unofficially, however, it is well known that Pentagon secretly adopted Tesla’s project for the remotely controlled ship and realized it, but only after the Second World War. Based on this invention of Nikola Tesla, American navy developed several projects of torpedoes and remote control of ship war projectiles in the 20th century.