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Leonardo Torres y Quevedo

Since there's no English language webpage dedicated to Torres y Quevedo, I'll see what I can pull together here.

[pic source]

1852: 28Dec: born in Santa Cruz, Spain (father an engineer)

1868: graduates Institute of Bilbao; continues studies in Paris

1876: graduates from Madrid School of Engineering

no-date: inheritance from aunts leaves him independent

quits railway job after a few months

1877 (1885?): marries (8 children)

1887: patents safer funicular (mountainside) cable-car design

1890: Switzerland rejects cable-car design

1893: "Memoria sobre las Máquinas Algébricas"

investigating analog treatment of complex numbers and logarithms

1894: algebraic equation solver can find roots of 9th-degree(?) polynomials [pic] [ditto] [component] [more]

1895: "Memoria Sur les machines algébraiques"

1895: algebraic machine can solve trinomial equations [pic]

1899: moves to Madrid

1900: "Memoria Machines á calculer"

1901: Laboratory of Applied Mechanics in Madrid

1903: Sep: patents 1st system for remote-control, Telekino (wireless telegraph controlling 'robot') [pic]

1905: builds 1st Spanish dirigible [pic]

1906: patents semi-rigid dirigible design

1906: demo of remote-controlled boat using Telekino

1907: 1st public implementation of cable-car design

1910: president of Royal Academy of Exact Sciences in Madrid

1911: commercial production of Astra-Torres dirigibles

1912: chess machine 'Ajedrecista' using electromagnets under the board plays flawless endgame with rook and king against lone king

1914: "Ensayos sobre automática" describes electromechanical implementation of Babbage's Analytic Engine incl floating-point

1915: Scientific American feature, "Torres and His Remarkable Automatic Devices"

1916: 08Aug: cable-car for Niagara Falls [info]

1916: Echegaray Medal

1918: designs transatlantic airship (too late to be the 1st)

1918: railway safety invention?

1918: rejects office of Minister of Promotion

1920: improved chess-machine [pic]

1920: "Aritmómetro Electromecánico"

electromechanical arithmometer solves problems typed in at keyboard, prints answers, theoretically supports time-sharing

1936: 18Dec: dies in Madrid at 83yo

1951: Torres's son demos chess-machine to Norbert Weiner [pic]

1982: Randell's "From Analytical Engine to Electronic Digital Computer: The Contributions of Ludgate, Torres and Bush" in Annals of History of Computing

Sources: Spanish, Spanish, Spanish

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