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Welcome to Brain Stuff, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hey, Brain Stuff. Lauren Vogelbaum here.

Remote controls are one of the most ubiquitous symbols of our modern technologies.

Even if you're the sort of minimalist who's consolidated your entertainment systems controls

to a single remote or a set of smartphone apps, you might have another dozen or so

around your home.

We control everything from ceiling fans and air conditioners to car door locks and garage or gate

openers to laundry machines and lamps via remote. And this isn't a scientific fact, but I think

chances are decent that we all have one or two remotes permanently lost amid an army of dust

bunnies in our couches. The most ubiquitous use of remotes may be for television control, but these devices far predate

TV. They're an invention born of the late 1800s. A renowned Serbian American inventor,

Nikola Tesla, created one of the world's first wireless remote controls, which he unveiled at Madison

Square Garden in New York City in 1989. He called his fledgling system, which could be used to control

a range of mechanical contraptions, a teleatomaton. Before his demonstration, Tesla employed a miniature

boat controlled by radio waves.

The boat had a small metal antenna that could receive exactly one radio frequency.

Tesla sent signals to the boat using a box equipped with a lever and a telegraph key,

originally designed to send Morse code signals.

The signals generated from this box

shifted electrical contacts aboard the boat, which, in turn, adjusted settings for the rudder

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