The man who replaced the mind with a machine. The story of Leonardo Torres
Some people are able to change the world by creating something incredible. The famous Spanish engineer and mathematician Leonardo Torres Quevedo was just such a person.
He made significant contributions to the development of aircraft and cable cars. The scientist also created Spain’s first mechanical computing machines, chess automata, and radio control systems. Another of his achievements is a universal artificial language for describing mechanical devices.
On December 28, 1852, in Santa Cruz de Iguña, in the family of civil engineer Luis Torres and Valentina Quevedo was born a son named Leonardo. After finishing school in Bilbao, Leonardo Torres Quevedo went to get an education in Paris. He graduated from the College of Christian Brothers in 1869. The next year, the family moved to the capital because his father found a job in Madrid. The young man entered the School of the Corps of Road Engineers, the university that trained specialists in the sphere of transportation and engineering.
Leonardo completed his studies in 1876 and took a job with a railroad company. However, he worked there for only a few months. Due to his parents’ frequent work trips, Leonardo was raised by the relatives of his father, the Barrenechea family. This family left the young engineer a large inheritance. Thanks to this, he was able to quit an unloved job. The scientist went traveling in Europe and visited France, Italy, and Switzerland. Leonardo devoted time on these trips to the study of scientific and technological innovations, especially electricity.
Transport
Leonardo Torres Quevedo returned to Spain and decided to devote his life to entrepreneurship. His first project was a cable car. The prototype was first built in his hometown in 1887. A 200-meter-long cable car connected the edges of a 40-meter-deep gorge. Passengers were seated on a wooden bench, and the structure was driven by a pair of cows.
The cable car used an original design to create the ropeway. It consisted of several cables, one attached to stationary counterweights and the other to movable counterweights. In this system, the axial force through the cables is constant and independent of the load on the suspension seats. The safety factor of the cables is very high, owing to the well-designed distribution of the balance. The inventor issued a patent for this design, “Un sistema de camino funicle aéreo de alambres múltiples” (“A multi-wire aerial funicle pathway system”). It became the basis for cable cars in Spain, the USA, Austria, Germany, France, Great Britain, Italy and Switzerland. Leonardo’s invention enjoyed particular success in these countries because of the peculiarities of the relief. The most famous such project on the basis of this patent was a 550-meter-long “ropeway” built in 1916 under the name “Whirlpool Aero Car” in the Niagara Gorge in Canada. It is still in operation today.
Aviation
In 1902, Leonardo Torres registered a patent for a new design of airship gondola suspension. The inventor proposed using a three-bladed section instead of the traditional cylindrical cepelline body. It contained a complex triangular-shaped longitudinal framework consisting of non-rigid ropes, permeable fabric curtains, metal cables, and spars. This structure stretches and transforms into a rigid structure when the airship hull is filled with gas.
Thanks to this invention, in 1904, Leonardo Torres Quevedo was appointed director of the Aeronautical Research Center in Madrid. Four years later, the first military airship for the Spanish Air Force was built under his supervision. It was named in honor of the inventor.
Тhe patent for its design was soon acquired by the French company Société Astra. It built a whole series of airships under the common name “Astra-Torres”. The Torres-designed airships were more maneuverable and stable than traditional airships. The French Air Force took them into service soon after. According to the terms of the contract, Leonardo Torres received a fee of 3 francs for each 1m3 of airship using his design.
Leonardo Torres also invented a mooring structure for airships. In 1910, he proposed the idea of attaching the bow of an airship to a mooring mast and allowing it to freely weather vane when the wind changes direction and speed. This construction has the form of a metal tower, to the top of which the bow of the zeppelin is attached by the stem. It became widely used and became very common during the period of popularity of aeronautics. In addition, the inventor proposed the idea of a special turntable for embarking and disembarking passengers. The Astra-Torres XIV Zeppelin broke the world speed record for airships in 1913. It accelerated to 77 mph in a crosswind.
Mechanical calculating machines
Leonardo Torres made significant contributions to the development of computer science. In 1893, he gave a talk entitled “Memória sobre las máquinas algébricas” (“Memo on algebraic machines”) at the Royal Spanish Academy of Sciences in Madrid. Based on this report, the inventor developed a prototype arithmometer. It embodied the ideas of other mechanical calculating machines and Charles Babbage’s analytical machine. The famous Spanish engineer and architect, Eduardo Saavedra, recommended the Academy of Sciences finance the final design of the device. Thus, the “Torres calculating machine” was born.
This calculating machine attracted the attention of Spanish and other foreign scientists. In 1895, Torres presented his invention at the Congress of the Association for the Advancement of Sciences in Bordeaux and Paris. In 1900, he published a detailed paper entitled “Machines à Calculer” (“Calculation Machines”) at the Paris Academy of Sciences.
Torres’ machine used logarithmic scales assembled on movable drums and complex differentials with helical gears. It allowed engineering and scientific calculations, such as solving logarithmic equations. Between 1910 and 1920, Leonardo Torres developed a machine capable of calculating the roots of arbitrary polynomials of the eighth order (including complex ones) with an accuracy of thousandths. Leonardo invented a mechanical machine for the complex solution of the quadratic equation X2 — pX + q = 0 in addition to this machine.
Several mechanical calculating machines are now in the museum of the Technical University of Madrid.
In 1920, the scientist introduced the Arithmomètre Electroméchanique (“Electromechanical Arithmometer”) in Paris. It consisted of an arithmetic device connected to an electric typewriter. Numbers and signs of mathematical operations could be entered on the keyboard of the typewriter. The result of calculations was printed out on the keyboard. This machine can be called the predecessor of modern computers.
Chess automata
Leonardo Torres also had an interest in chess. In 1914, he designed a mechanical chess machine, which he called El Ajedrecista (The Chess Player). The invention was indeed an “automaton”. It could independently play an endgame with the king and rook against the king from any position without any human intervention.
Leonardo Torres glued a metal grid to the base of the chess pieces. It shorted electrical contacts on the chessboard. When a player moved the black king manually, the algorithm calculated and executed the next move for the player with white pieces. In this way, it chose the most optimal option from all possible options.
Due to the limitations of the algorithm, the machine could not checkmate within the required 50 moves. However, all games played by it always ended in a checkmate. If the opponent made a wrong move, the automaton turned on the light signaling. After three wrong moves by the opponent, it stopped the game. This Leonardo Torres machine is considered to be the world’s first gaming machine.
The automaton was first presented to the public at the University of Paris in 1914. It created a real sensation. A large article describing its design was published in the French journal La Nature. All of the world’s mass media wrote about the invention. The famous Scientific American magazine published a large article entitled “Torres and his Remarkable Automatic Devices. He Would Substitute Machinery for the Human Mind.”
The second version of the chess machine was built by Leonardo’s son, Gonzalo. It was presented in Paris in 1922. This machine was already electromechanical and used electric relays in its design. The chessboard was equipped with electromagnets. Also, at the end of the game, the device included a voice recording announcing the checkmate to the opponent. This automaton became the first machine in history to beat a grandmaster. Austrian computer pioneer Heinz Zemanek described it as “a historic testament to the mastery of automata, far ahead of its time.” According to Zemanek, Leonardo Torres developed a very clever six-part algorithm for the game. It was implemented using levers, gears and electrical relays.
Remote control systems
Leonardo Torres is one of the pioneers of remote control systems for complex machinery. Between 1901 and 1902, he developed such systems to test his uncrewed airships. The purpose of this device was to reduce the risk to human life. He called his device the Telekino. It is a combination of two Greek words: “tele”, meaning “at a distance”, and “kino”, meaning “movement.” He patented the invention in Spain, France, and the United Kingdom.
“Torres’ Telekino was a combination of a wireless telegraph, a multi-position rotary switch, and two servo motors. These actuated the mechanical control systems. The wireless telegraph signal was transmitted over the air and received aboard the aircraft by a coherer, an electromagnetic wave detector. It was then converted into an electrical signal, amplified and transmitted to electromagnets. Each of these caused the multi-position switch to move one step forward or backward. When the switch reached its final position, the corresponding electrical circuit shorted, energizing the servomotor. The result was a remote control system. Torres first presented it at the Paris Academy of Sciences on August 3, 1903.
Leonardo Torres came to the conclusion that the signals transmitted by radiotelegraph represent a code in the binary number system. Therefore, he created a set of commands — binary “words” — for remote control of the airship. The problem with streaming commands was the impossibility of creating a mechanism that could detect the end of one character and the beginning of the next. To solve this problem, the scientist decided to apply a method of asynchronous data transmission. It was based on changing the state of the telegraph signal. Thanks to “telekino” Leonardo Torres could transmit to the airship 19 different commands. With their help, it was possible to choose different modes of operation for steering and marching engines, turn on or off electric lighting on board, etc.
In 1904, Leonardo Torres successfully tested his system from a distance of 30 meters on a three-wheeled self-propelled carriage. This was the first official case of a radio-controlled car in history. The following year, the system was installed in a boat with a motor and tested at a distance of 250 meters in the Casa de Campo pond in Madrid. And on September 25, 1906, in the presence of King Alfonso XIII and the public, Leonardo Torres successfully demonstrated the invention in the port of Bilbao. He controlled a boat with passengers from the shore. The range of signal transmission reached 2 kilometers. Torres applied to the Spanish Crown for funding to build such a system to control underwater torpedoes. However, his application was rejected due to the high cost of the device. The inventor had to complete all the work on this project. Who knows how naval battles would have changed if the Spanish treasury had agreed to pay the costs?
Universal technical language
Leonardo Torres was repeatedly faced with the difficulty of describing his engineering solutions in different languages. To solve this problem, in 1907, the scientist developed a formal international language for technical documentation, mechanical drawings and engineering devices. He published it in the scientific paper “Sobre un sistema de notaciones y símbolos destinados a facilitar la descripción de las máquinas” (“On a system of notations and symbols intended to facilitate the description of machines”). According to Heinz Zemanek, Torres’ invention was the equivalent of a real programming language, but for mechanical devices of the early twentieth century.
Leonardo defined a table of symbols, a set of rules, and a dictionary of his language. The inventor wrote: “Babbage and Franz Relot — and I believe others, though I have no news of them — have tried unsuccessfully to remove this inconvenience; but, though these eminent authors have failed, is this a sufficient reason for abandoning such an important effort?”. Torres’ idea also failed. The language did not gain popularity. Nevertheless, in the process of developing it, Leonardo became fascinated by Esperanto. He eventually became a respected Esperantist.
Leonardo Torres died on December 18, 1936, at the home of his son Gonzalo in Madrid, ten days before his eighty-fourth birthday. He has made history not only as the recipient of many awards but also as the author of a large number of scientific papers and daring inventions. He was also a brilliant engineer who was ahead of his time.
This article is written by Techical Editor Valentin Holmogorov and supported by the Serverspace team.
Serverspace is an international cloud provider offering automatic deployment of virtual infrastructure based on Linux and Windows from anywhere in the world in less than 1 minute. For the integration of client services, open tools like API, CLI, and Terraform are available.
