Tesla and the origin of drones

That same year, he obtained a patent for this primitive water drone, which he tried to sell to the United States Navy without much success. This type of device did not arouse the interest of the military until the arrival of World War I.

A few years later, in 1903, the great Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres presented his version of a remote-controlled drone, the Telekino, much more elaborate than the Tesla model and that allowed to fully handle a small boat, however, due to the lack of financing this invention could not be carried out. Finally, and many years later, in late 1946, the US Air Force approved a program to develop three types of drones for use as training targets. Of the three, the Q-2 model, was the most important, becoming the father of a class of “target” aircraft built by the Ryan Aeronautical Company.

The development of drones collapsed for decades due to the low need for them because of the success and developments in the field of missiles. In the mid-1950s the United States Army developed a type of long-range missile with a precision guidance system, somewhat more like a small aircraft.

In May 1964, the United States began considering sending drones to replace its U-2s on spy missions over Cuba. The “fireflies” operated by the United States were later used for surveillance in the so-called “sensitive areas”, the main theaters of the Cold War: among them Cuba, North Korea, and the People’s Republic of China. For many years and until today, drones have been used to facilitate military operations and government investigations. As we can see, drones were created to gain a military advantage against the enemy, the technology that has been developed for this has evolved over the years.

Step by step, unmanned aircraft were acquiring new capabilities that allow their use outside the military sphere. Currently, the applications of drones in the civil field are spreading and changing the traditional models of work in sectors such as agriculture, aerial thermography, surveying, inspection, and maintenance of industrial infrastructure, as well as tasks in the audiovisual sector and others very diverse.