Inventing Radio Control

Admiral Fiske Gives Some Interesting Details of His Scheme.

To the Editor of The New York Times

May I ask attention to an error in your editorial "Piloting Planes by Radio"?

The error lay in the phrase, "radio-controlled aircraft, carrying huge gyroscopically directed torpedoes, of the type proposed by Admiral Fiske just before the treaty was signed."

Now the curious fact is that, although I was the original inventor and patentee of radio-controlled vehicles, yet I vehemently opposed radio control of airplanes "just before the treaty was signed." What I did propose and energetically urge, in a number of addresses and articles, was the use of torpedo planes and bombers; the torpedo planes to be used for sinking German battleships in Kiel Harbor, and the bombers to be used for bombing the buildings in the navy yard there, and the lighter ships. For such work I felt sure that radio control would not be practicable, but I did feel sure that torpedo planes and bombers could do the work. Of course, it is well known that this combination of torpedo planes and bombers is used by all the great navies now.

The story of my invention of radio control contains several interesting features. I invented it in July, 1897, when on board the U. S. S. Petrel, anchored in the harbor of Chemulpo, Korea. I sent the drawings and description to Harry B. Thayer, manager of the New York branch of the Western Electric Company, suggesting that the company patent it. In about two months I received his answer, saying that he had referred my letter to the president of the company, and that the president had replied that Lieutenant Fiske's proposition was too far away from practicability to warrant consideration.

But about a month after the Battle of Manila Bay (nearly a year later), I received a letter from Mr. Thayer, written the day after the battle, saying that he had just received a telephone message from the president of the company, directing him to take out that patent for Lieutenant Fiske and do anything else that the Lieutenant desired.

So the Western Electric Company then applied for a patent. The application in the Patent Office bore the date of Sept. 7, 1898. But when I arrived in New York in February, 1900, after my cruise, I found that my application had not yet been granted; but that a patent had been granted to Nikola Tesla for a scheme virtually identical. Correspondence between the company and the Patent Office disclosed the curious fact (which the Patent Office admitted), that they had made the mistake of issuing a patent to Tesla, although another application for virtually the same thing had been received before Tesla's application! The situation was perplexing; but the Western Electric attorneys and the Patent Office officials finally devised an arrangement by which the error of the office was not exposed, and I was granted a patent that underlay Tesla's, although bearing a later date. The date was Oct. 23, 1900.

This was the scheme that John Hays Hammond Jr. so brilliantly developed in the experiments that your editorial describes.

My first claim read, "I therefore claim the combination, with a source of electrical waves or disturbances, of a moving vessel or vehicle, and mechanism thereon for steering or operating the same, and controlling apparatus adapted to be actuated by the influence of the said waves or disturbances, at a distance from the source."

BRADLEY A. FISKE,
Rear Admiral, U. S. N. (retired).
New York, June 3, 1931.