Nikola Tesla Patents
282 The fact that vessels have been controlled by electric currents directed from a stationary source through metallic conductors is fully recognized. The further fact that a receiving apparatus, more or less remote from a source of waves or disturbances has been operated by the influence of such waves is also recognized. But these facts, we submit, do not warrant the objection to the claims as now drawn. The applicant has really created a new art, and this would be true even if we were to admit that in carrying it out he had made use of known apparatus and employed such apparatus in ways in which it had been employed for other purposes. The problem before the inventor was not the mere operation of a remote receiving apparatus by the propagation of electric waves to which such receiver was sensitive. The utilization of such a procedure was only an incident, the accomplishment of an end of much grander proportions. For, granting that it was known that a receiver could be so influenced, it must be borne in mind that the requirements of the prior art were satisfied when these influences were such as to be capable of detection or observation merely. All that the prior art suggested, in other words, was that a signal might be conveyed by such means to a distant point. It might have been an easy matter for any one to propose the scheme of a vessel devoid of all physical connection with the operator, being caused to obey implicitly in its motions the will of such operator, but it seems to us that the mere conception of the idea of directing such -29
