Science: Radio Auto

In Manhattan, an empty touring car lounged against a Broadway curb. A man stepped on the running-board but did not approach the controls. Pedestrians gaped to hear the chauffeurless machine start its motor, shift into gear, lurch away from the curb into thick traffic. Down Broadway it went, looping uncertainly back and forth across the street. It missed a cowering milkwagon, blew its horn, dodged a speeding fire-engine. Motorcycle police escorted the vagrant down Fifth Avenue, where a particularly wild lurch brought the man on the running-board to the steering wheel, not in time, however, to avoid a crash with a car full of cinematographers.

The automobile was Inventor Francis P. Houdina’s American Wonder, controlled by radio waves sent from a following car. Two sets of waves were used, caught by antennae on the Wonder’s tonneau, introduced to circuit-breakers operating small electric motors, which in turn operated steering wheel, clutch, brake, gears, horn.

Some of the observers recalled the successful experiments of Inventor John Hays Hammond Jr., and others with radio-controlled ships, submarines, automobiles, toys.