Leonardo Torres Quevedo
(Santa Cruz de Iguña, Cantabria, 1852 - Madrid, 1936)

Leonardo Torres Quevedo began his higher studies in the Official School of the Road Engineers' Corps. He was a mathematician and passionate researcher, and the practical applications of his research made Leonardo Torres Quevedo the Spanish inventor par excellence. He was also was the driving force behind the policies to promote the construction, import and distribution of scientific instruments for schools and research centers in the first third of the 20th century.

Aeronautics, mechanics and automation were the pillars on which he based his works and inventions; his first patent for the funicular railway dates back to 1887; in 1893 he submitted to the Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales his first report on the algebraic machines, and in 1902 he presented to the Paris scientists his airship or dirigible project, a prototype that would solve the serious problem of suspending the gondola by including an internal frame of flexible cables that would give the airship rigidity by way of interior pressure.

In 1905, in collaboration with Alfredo Kindelán, he built the first dirigible for the Servicio de Aerostación Militar del Ejército (Spanish Army Aerostatics Section). It was a success: the French company Astra bought the rights to build it, and some of these airships were used by the English and French armies during the First World War for naval protection missions. 

In 1903, Torres Quevedo presented at the Paris Academy of Sciences another of his inventions: the Telekino. The Telekino consisted of a robot that executed commands transmitted by electromagnetic waves. It constituted the world's first apparatus for radio control and was a pioneer in the field of remote control.  In 1906, he made a demonstration at the port of Bilbao, guiding a small boat from the shore. Later, he would try to apply the Telekino to projectiles and torpedoes, but had to abandon the project for lack of financing.

Algebraic machines or analog computing machines were Torres Quevedo’s third major area of research. Analogue calculating machines seek solutions to equations by translating them into physical phenomena. He built a whole mechanical series of these machines, to examine mathematical and physical analogies that underlay analogue calculation or continuous quantities, and how to establish mechanically the relationships between them, expressed in mathematical formulae. The study included complex variables and used the logarithmic scale. From a practical standpoint, it showed that mechanisms such as turning disks could be used endlessly with precision, so that variables' variations were limited in both directions. One component of these machines is called the  "endless spindle." Sorolla’s portrait of Torres Quevedo showed this component. The artist made a preliminary study in 1917, kept at his museum in Madrid. 

Torres Quevedo was a member of the steering committee of the Junta para Ampliación de Estudios (JAE) and played a leading and decisive role in the creation of three key state agencies that were the models for the JAE’s support to research, regardless of the discipline: the Laboratorio de Automática (Laboratory of Automation, 1907) for the construction of instruments, the Asociación de Laboratorios (Laboratories Association, 1910), that joined state laboratories and workshops, and the Instituto del Material Científico (Institute of Science Materials, 1911), which took care of the budget.

The Laboratory of Automation produced the most varied instruments;
it not only built its own inventions, but also provided services and support to universities and researchers of the JAE. Torres Quevedo, Blas Cabrera, and Juan Costa, the head of the workshop, jointly designed several scientific instruments (Weiss-type electromagnet, an X-ray spectrometer, a mechanism to handle through remote control a Bunge scale, a reservoir of variable height with micrometer movements for magnetic-chemical measurements, and some on). Ángel del Campo, head of the Spectroscopy Section of the Laboratory of Physical Research and Miguel Catalan’s teacher, ordered Torres Quevedo’s workshop a spectrographic equipment similar to the one developed by Kaiser; Manuel Martínez Risco requested an interferometer for a variable distance, Michelson- type; Juan Negrín requested a stalagmometer, and Cajal commissioned a Minot microtome and panmicrotome, and a projector for film screenings.

A final interesting biographical data to understand a character so unusual as Leonardo Torres Quevedo was the project he presented in the International Scientific Congress held in Buenos Aires in 1910, one of the events organized to mark the centenary of the independence of Argentina. The project, entitled ”Unión Internacional Hispano-Americana de Bibliografía y Tecnología Científica”, was intended to clarify, enhance, unify, and enrich the Spanish technical language.
The first task was the publication of the Diccionario tecnológico de la lengua española in order to tackle the problems caused by the increasing use of scientific and technological neologisms, as well as the adaptation of words from other languages, confronted with the avalanche of foreign terms. In 1920, Torres Quevedo entered the Royal Spanish Academy, where he held the seat that had belonged to Pérez Galdós. In 1901, he had become a member of the Academia de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales, and he was awarded the Echegaray Medal in 1916.