Leonardo Torres y Quevedo
Encyclopedia
Engineer
An engineer is a professional practitioner of engineering, concerned with applying scientific knowledge, mathematics and ingenuity to develop solutions for technical problems. Engineers design materials, structures, machines and systems while considering the limitations imposed by practicality,...
and mathematician
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Biography
Torres was born on 28 December 1852, on the Feast of the Holy Innocents, in Santa Cruz de Iguña, Molledo (CantabriaCantabria
Cantabria is a Spanish historical region and autonomous community with Santander as its capital city. It is bordered on the east by the Basque Autonomous Community , on the south by Castile and León , on the west by the Principality of Asturias, and on the north by the Cantabrian Sea.Cantabria...
), Spain. The family resided for the most part in Bilbao
Bilbao
Bilbao ) is a Spanish municipality, capital of the province of Biscay, in the autonomous community of the Basque Country. With a population of 353,187 , it is the largest city of its autonomous community and the tenth largest in Spain...
, where Leonardo's father worked as a railway engineer, although they also spent long periods in his mother's family home in the Cantabrian Mountain
Cantabria
Cantabria is a Spanish historical region and autonomous community with Santander as its capital city. It is bordered on the east by the Basque Autonomous Community , on the south by Castile and León , on the west by the Principality of Asturias, and on the north by the Cantabrian Sea.Cantabria...
. In Bilbao he studied to enter an advanced high school program and later spent two years in Paris to complete his studies. In 1870, his father was transferred, bringing his family to Madrid
Madrid
Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...
. The same year, Torres began his higher studies in the Official School of the Road Engineers' Corps. He temporarily suspended his studies in 1873 to volunteer for the defense of Bilbao, which had been surrounded by Carlist
Carlism
Carlism is a traditionalist and legitimist political movement in Spain seeking the establishment of a separate line of the Bourbon family on the Spanish throne. This line descended from Infante Carlos, Count of Molina , and was founded due to dispute over the succession laws and widespread...
troops during the Third Carlist War
Third Carlist War
The Third Carlist War was the last Carlist War in Spain. It is very often referred to as the Second Carlist War, as the 'second' had been small in scale and almost trivial in political consequence....
. Returning to Madrid, he completed his studies in 1876, fourth in his graduating class.
He began his career with the same train company for which his father had worked, but he immediately set out on a long trip through Europe to get to know the scientific and technical advances of the day firsthand, especially in the incipient area of electricity. Upon returning to Spain, he took up residence in Santander where he financed his own work and began a regimen of study and investigation that he never abandoned. The fruit of these investigations appeared in his first scientific work in 1893.
He married in 1885 and had eight children.
In 1899 he moved to Madrid and became involved in that city's cultural life. From the work he carried out in these years, the Athenæum of Madrid
Ateneo de Madrid
The Ateneo de Madrid is a private cultural institution located in the capital of Spain, originally founded in 1835. Its full name is Ateneo Científico, Literario y Artístico de Madrid .-History:The roots of the Athenæum trace to the ideals of Francophiles and liberals of the early 19th...
created the Laboratory of Applied Mechanics of which he was named director. The Laboratory dedicated itself to the manufacture of scientific instruments. That same year, he entered the Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences in Madrid, of which entity he was president in 1910. Among the works of the Laboratory, the cinematography
Cinematography
Cinematography is the making of lighting and camera choices when recording photographic images for cinema. It is closely related to the art of still photography...
of Gonzalo Brañas and the X-ray
X-ray
X-radiation is a form of electromagnetic radiation. X-rays have a wavelength in the range of 0.01 to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30 petahertz to 30 exahertz and energies in the range 120 eV to 120 keV. They are shorter in wavelength than UV rays and longer than gamma...
spectrograph
Spectrograph
A spectrograph is an instrument that separates an incoming wave into a frequency spectrum. There are several kinds of machines referred to as spectrographs, depending on the precise nature of the waves...
of Cabrera and Costa are notable.
In the early 1900s, Torres learned the international language Esperanto
Esperanto
is the most widely spoken constructed international auxiliary language. Its name derives from Doktoro Esperanto , the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof published the first book detailing Esperanto, the Unua Libro, in 1887...
, and was an advocate of the language throughout his life.
In 1916 King Alfonso XIII
Alfonso XIII of Spain
Alfonso XIII was King of Spain from 1886 until 1931. His mother, Maria Christina of Austria, was appointed regent during his minority...
bestowed the Echegaray Medal upon him; in 1918, he declined the offer of the position of Minister of Development. In 1920, he entered the Royal Spanish Academy, in the seat that had been occupied by Benito Pérez Galdós
Benito Pérez Galdós
Benito Pérez Galdós was a Spanish realist novelist. Considered second only to Cervantes in stature, he was the leading Spanish realist novelist....
, and became a member of the department of Mechanics of the Paris Academy of Science. In 1922 the Sorbonne
University of Paris
The University of Paris was a university located in Paris, France and one of the earliest to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid 12th century, and officially recognized as a university probably between 1160 and 1250...
named him an Honorary Doctor and, in 1927, he was named one of the twelve associated members of the Academy.
Torres died in Madrid, in the heat of the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
on 18 December 1936, ten days shy of his eighty-fourth birthday.
Aerostatics
In 1902, Leonardo Torres Quevedo presented to the Science Academies of Madrid and Paris the project of a new type of dirigibleAirship
An airship or dirigible is a type of aerostat or "lighter-than-air aircraft" that can be steered and propelled through the air using rudders and propellers or other thrust mechanisms...
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, with the help of Alfredo Kindelán
Alfredo Kindelán
right|thumb|Kindelán in aviator uniformAlfredo Kindelán y Duany was a Spanish general and politician.-Early career:...
, Torres directed the construction of the first Spanish dirigible in the Army Military Aerostatics Service, created in 1896 and located in Guadalajara
Guadalajara, Spain
Guadalajara is a city and municipality in the autonomous community of Castile-La Mancha, Spain, and in the natural region of La Alcarria. It is the capital of the province of Guadalajara. It is located roughly 60 km northeast of Madrid on the Henares River, and has a population of 83,789...
. It was completed successfully, and the new airship, the España, made numerous test and exhibition flights. As a result, a collaboration began between Torres and the French company Astra
Société Astra
Société Astra des Constructions Aéronautiques was a major French manufacturer of balloons, airships, and aeroplanes in the early 20th Century. It was founded in 1908 when Henri Deutsch de la Meurthe purchased Édouard Surcouf's workshops at Billancourt...
, which managed to buy the patent with a cession of rights extended to all countries except Spain, in order to make possible the construction of the dirigible in its country. So, in 1911, the construction of dirigibles known as the Astra-Torres airship
Astra-Torres airship
The Astra-Torres airships were non-rigid airships built by Société Astra to a design by Spaniard Leonardo Torres Quevedo in France between about 1908 and 1922. They had a highly-characteristic tri-lobed cross-section rather than the more usual circular cross-section. This was the result of moving...
s was begun. Some were acquired by the French and British armies at the beginning of 1913, and were used during the First World War for diverse tasks, principally naval protection and inspection.
In 1918, Torres designed, in collaboration with the engineer Emilio Herrera Linares
Emilio Herrera Linares
Emilio Herrera Linares was a Spanish military engineer. He graduated from the military academy of Guadalajara in 1902; he subsequently researched/studied aeronautics, including a brief period at the University of Santander. He was father of the poet José Herrera Petere.During the Spanish Civil...
, a transatlantic dirigible, which was named Hispania, aiming to claim the honor of the first transatlantic flight for Spain. Owing to financial problems, the project was delayed and it was the Britons John Alcock
John Alcock (aviator)
Sir John William Alcock KBE, DSC was a Captain in the Royal Air Force who, together with navigator Lieutenant Arthur Whitten Brown, piloted the first non-stop transatlantic flight from St. John's, Newfoundland to Clifden, Connemara, Ireland.-Biography:Jack Alcock was born on 5 November 1892 at...
and Arthur Brown
Arthur Whitten Brown
Sir Arthur Whitten Brown KBE was the navigator of the first successful non-stop transatlantic flight.-Life and work:...
who crossed the Atlantic
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
without stop from Newfoundland
Dominion of Newfoundland
The Dominion of Newfoundland was a British Dominion from 1907 to 1949 . The Dominion of Newfoundland was situated in northeastern North America along the Atlantic coast and comprised the island of Newfoundland and Labrador on the continental mainland...
to Ireland
Ireland
Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...
in a Vickers Vimy
Vickers Vimy
The Vickers Vimy was a British heavy bomber aircraft of the First World War and post-First World War era. It achieved success as both a military and civil aircraft, setting several notable records in long-distance flights in the interwar period, the most celebrated of which was the first non-stop...
twin-engine plane, in sixteen hours and twelve minutes.
Chess Automaton
In early 1910, Torres began to construct a chess automaton he dubbed El AjedrecistaEl Ajedrecista
El Ajedrecista was an automaton built in 1912 by Leonardo Torres y Quevedo. El Ajedrecista made a public debut during the Paris World Fair of 1914, creating great excitement at the time. It was first widely mentioned in Scientific American as "Torres and His Remarkable Automatic Devices" on...
(The Chessplayer) that was able to automatically play a king and rook endgame against king from any position, without any human intervention. This device was first publicly demonstrated in Paris in 1914, and is considered the world's first computer game. Mechanical arms moved the pieces in the prototype, but by 1920, electromagnets under the board were employed for this task.
Cableways
In 1890 he presented his cableway in Switzerland
Switzerland
Switzerland name of one of the Swiss cantons. ; ; ; or ), in its full name the Swiss Confederation , is a federal republic consisting of 26 cantons, with Bern as the seat of the federal authorities. The country is situated in Western Europe,Or Central Europe depending on the definition....
, a country very interested in that transport owing to its geography and which was already coming to use cable cars for bulk transport, but Torres's project was dismissed, allowing certain ironic commentary from the Swiss press. In 1907, Torres constructed the first cableway suitable for the public transportation of people, in Monte Ulía in San Sebastián. The problem of safety was solved by means of an ingenious system of multiple support cables. The resulting design was very strong and perfectly resisted the rupture of one of the support cables. The execution of the project was the responsibility of the Society of Engineering Studies and Works of Bilbao, which successfully constructed other cableways in Chamonix
Chamonix
Chamonix-Mont-Blanc or, more commonly, Chamonix is a commune in the Haute-Savoie département in the Rhône-Alpes region in south-eastern France. It was the site of the 1924 Winter Olympics, the first Winter Olympics...
, Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro , commonly referred to simply as Rio, is the capital city of the State of Rio de Janeiro, the second largest city of Brazil, and the third largest metropolitan area and agglomeration in South America, boasting approximately 6.3 million people within the city proper, making it the 6th...
, and elsewhere. But it is doubtless the Spanish Aerocar in Niagara Falls
Niagara Falls, Ontario
Niagara Falls is a Canadian city on the Niagara River in the Golden Horseshoe region of Southern Ontario. The municipality was incorporated on June 12, 1903...
in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
which has gained the greatest fame in this area of activity, although from a scientific point of view it was not the most important. The cableway of 580 meters in length is an aerial cable car that spans the whirlpool
Whirlpool
A whirlpool is a swirling body of water usually produced by ocean tides. The vast majority of whirlpools are not very powerful. More powerful ones are more properly termed maelstroms. Vortex is the proper term for any whirlpool that has a downdraft...
in the Niagara Gorge
Niagara Gorge
Niagara Gorge is a gorge carved by the Niagara River along the US-Canadian border in New York and Ontario. As Niagara Falls recedes upstream toward Lake Erie, the river has gouged the hard dolomitic limestone of the Niagara escarpment to form the gorge...
on the Canadian
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...
side, constructed between 1914 and 1916, a Spanish project from beginning to end: devised by a Spaniard, constructed by a Spanish company with Spanish capital (The Niagara Spanish Aerocar Co. Limited); a bronze plaque, located on a monolith at the entrance of the access station recalls this fact: Spanish aerial ferry of the Niagara. Leonardo Quevedo Torres (1852–1936). It was inaugurated in tests on 15 February 1916 and was officially inaugurated on 8 August 1916, opening to the public the following day; the cableway, with small modifications, continues to run to this day, with no accidents worthy of mention, constituting a popular tourist and cinematic attraction.
Radio Control: the Telekino
In 1903, Torres presented the Telekino at the Paris Academy of Science, accompanied by a brief, and making an experimental demonstration. In the same year, he obtained a patent in France, Spain, Great Britain, and the United States.The Telekino consisted of a robot
Robot
A robot is a mechanical or virtual intelligent agent that can perform tasks automatically or with guidance, typically by remote control. In practice a robot is usually an electro-mechanical machine that is guided by computer and electronic programming. Robots can be autonomous, semi-autonomous or...
that executed commands transmitted by electromagnetic waves. It constituted the world's second publicly demonstrated apparatus for radio control, after Nikola Tesla's Patented "Teleautomaton", and was a pioneer in the field of remote control
Remote control
A remote control is a component of an electronics device, most commonly a television set, used for operating the television device wirelessly from a short line-of-sight distance.The remote control is usually contracted to remote...
. In 1906, in the presence of the king and before a great crowd, Torres successfully demonstrated the invention in the port of Bilbao
Port of Bilbao
The Port of Bilbao is located on the Bilbao Abra bay, and along the Estuary of Bilbao, in Biscay . The main facilities are in the Santurtzi and Zierbena municipalities, approximately 15 km west of Bilbao...
, guiding a 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. In 2007, the prestigious Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers is a non-profit professional association headquartered in New York City that is dedicated to advancing technological innovation and excellence...
(IEEE) dedicated a Milestone in Electrical Engineering and Computing to the Telekino, based on the research work developed at Technical University of Madrid
Technical University of Madrid
The Technical University of Madrid or sometimes called Polytechnic University of Madrid is a Spanish University, located in Madrid. It was founded in 1971 as the result of merging different Technical Schools of Engineering and Architecture, originated mainly in the 18th century...
by Prof. Antonio Pérez Yuste
Antonio Pérez Yuste
Antonio Pérez Yuste is a Professor of Telecommunications Engineering at Technical University of Madrid, Spain . He is currently serving as Head of the University President's Cabinet and Director of the Satellite-Tech Master's Program, both at Technical University of Madrid...
, who was the driving force behind the Milestone nomination.
Analogue calculating machines
Analogue calculating machines seek solutions to equations by translating them into physical phenomena. Numbers are represented by physical magnitudes such as may be done with certain rotational axes, potentials, electrical or electromagnetic states, and so on. A mathematical process is thereby transformed by these machines into an operative process of certain physical magnitudes which leads to a physical result corresponding with the sought mathematical solution. The mathematical problem therefore is solved by a physical model of itself. From the mid 19th century, various such mechanical devices were known, including integrators, multipliers, and so on, to say nothing of Charles BabbageCharles Babbage
Charles Babbage, FRS was an English mathematician, philosopher, inventor and mechanical engineer who originated the concept of a programmable computer...
's analytical machine. It is against this background that Torres's work is defined. He began with a presentation in 1893 at the Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences of the Memory on algebraic machines. In his time, this was considered an extraordinary success for Spanish scientific production. In 1895 the machines were presented at a congress in Bordeaux. Later on, in 1900, la Memoria would present the calculating machines at the Paris Academy of Sciences. These machines examined 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
Logarithmic scale
A logarithmic scale is a scale of measurement using the logarithm of a physical quantity instead of the quantity itself.A simple example is a chart whose vertical axis increments are labeled 1, 10, 100, 1000, instead of 1, 2, 3, 4...
. 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.
On the practical side, Torres built a whole series of analogue calculating machines, all mechanical. These machines used certain elements known as arithmophores which consisted of a moving part and an index that made it possible to read the quantity according to the position shown thereon. . The aforesaid moving part was a graduated disk or a drum turning on an axis. The angular movements were proportional to the logarithms of the magnitudes to be represented. Using a number of such elements, Torres developed a machine that could solve algebraic equations, even one with eight terms, finding the roots, including the complex ones, with a precision down to thousandths. One part of this machine, called an "endless spindle" ("fusee sans fin") and consisting of great mechanical complexity, allowed the mechanical expression of the relation y=log(10^x+1), with the aim of extracting the logarithm of a sum as a sum of logarithms, the same technique which is the basis of the modern electronic Logarithmic Number System
Logarithmic Number System
A logarithmic number system is an arithmetic system used for representing real numbers in computer and digital hardware, especially for digital signal processing.-Theory:...
. Since an analogical machine was being used, the variable could be of any value (not only discrete prefixed values). With a polynomial equation, the wheels representing the unknown spin round, and the result gives the values of the sum of the variables. When this sum coincides with the value of the second member, the wheel of the unknown shows a root.
Technical University of Madrid
The Technical University of Madrid or sometimes called Polytechnic University of Madrid is a Spanish University, located in Madrid. It was founded in 1971 as the result of merging different Technical Schools of Engineering and Architecture, originated mainly in the 18th century...
(UPM).
See also
- List of Spanish scientists, engineers and inventors