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History of Radio Control
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In 1898 at an exhibition at Madison Square Garden Nikola Tesla demonstrated a small boat which could apparently obey commands from the audience but was in fact controlled by Tesla interpreting the verbal requests and sending appropriate frequencies to tuned circuits in the boat.[1] John Hays Hammond Jr is regarded as the father of radio control due to the fact he was involved in experiments as an apprentice of Thomas Edison at the age of twelve. Hammond was a close friend of Tesla and they performed experiments together in his lab located in his castle. He learned a great deal form his exposure to Tesla. Tesla was granted a US patent on this invention on November 8, 1898.[2] In 1903, the Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres y Quevedo presented the "Telekino" at the Paris Academy of Science, and was granted a patent in France, Spain, Great Britain and the United States.[3] In 1904, Bat, a Windermere steam launch, was controlled using experimental radio control by its inventor, Jack Kitchen. In 1909 the French inventor Gabet demonstrated what he called his "Torpille Radio-Automatique", a radio controlled torpedo.[4] In 1917, Archibald Low as head of the RFC Experimental Works, was the first person to use radio control successfully on an aircraft. In the 1920s, various radio-controlled ships were used for naval artillery target practice. The Soviet Red Army used remotely controlled teletanks during 1930s in the Winter War against Finland and fielded at least two teletank battalions at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War. A teletank is controlled by radio from a control tank at a distance of 500–1,500 meters, the two constituting a telemechanical group. There were also remotely controlled cutters and experimental remotely controlled planes in the Red Army. In the 1930s Britain developed the radio controlled Queen Bee, a remotely controlled unmanned Tiger Moth aircraft for a fleet's gunnery firing practice. The Queen Bee was superseded by the similarly named Queen Wasp, a later, purpose built, target aircraft of higher performance.
The first general use of radio control systems in models started in the early 1950s with single-channel self-built equipment; commercial equipment came later. The advent of transistors greatly reduced the battery requirements, since the current requirements at low voltage were greatly reduced and the high voltage battery was eliminated. In both tube and early transistor sets the model's control surfaces were usually operated by an electromagnetic escapement controlling the stored energy in a rubber-band loop, allowing simple on/off rudder control (right, left, and neutral) and sometimes other functions such as motor speed.[5]
Crystal-controlled superheterodyne receivers with better selectivity and stability made control equipment more capable and at lower cost. Multi-channel developments were of particular use to aircraft, which really needed a minimum of three control dimensions (yaw, pitch and motor speed), as opposed to boats, which can get away with two or one.
As the electronics revolution took off, single-signal channel circuit design became redundant, and instead radios provided proportionally coded signal streams which a servomechanism could interpret.
More recently, high-end hobby systems using Pulse-code modulation (PCM) features have come on the market that provide a computerized digital bit-stream signal to the receiving device, instead of analog type pulse modulation. However, even with this coding, loss of transmission during flight has become more common in part because of the ever more wireless society.
In the early 21st century, 2.4 gigahertz transmissions have become increasingly utilized in high-end control of model vehicles and aircraft. Now, these 2.4 gigahertz systems are being made by most radio manufacturers. The radios range from a couple thousand dollars, all the way down to under US$30 for some systems. Some manufacturers even offer conversion kits for older digital 72 Mhz band radios.