Leonardo Torres Quevedo

Leonardo Torres Quevedo was a Spanish civil engineer, computer scientist, and inventor. He developed the first chess-playing automaton and contributed to the field of modern automation with his inventions of new calculating machines that used electromechanical systems. His machines are considered to be the first digital calculators in history, using discrete variables to do calculations.

In 1912, Leonardo Torres Quevedo built El Ajedrecista (the chess player), one of the first autonomous machines capable of playing chess. As opposed to the human-operated The Turk and Ajeeb, El Ajedrecista was a true automaton built to play chess without human guidance. It played an endgame with three chess pieces, automatically moving a white king and a rook to checkmate the black king moved by a human opponent. In his work Essays on Automatics, published in 1914, Torres Quevedo formulates what will be a new branch of engineering: automation and designed an electromechanical version of Babbage's Analytical machine which included floating-point arithmetic.

Leonardo Torres Quevedo was a Spanish civil engineer, mathematician and inventor, known for his numerous engineering innovations, including aerial trams, airships, catamarans, and remote control. He was also a pioneer in the field of computing and robotics. Torres was a member of several scientific and cultural institutions and held such important positions as the seat N of the Real Academia Española (1920–1936) and the presidency of the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences (1928–1934). In 1927 he became a foreign associate of the French Academy of Sciences.

• He was also a pioneer in the field of computing and robotics.
• His first groundbreaking invention was a cable car system patented in 1887 for the safe transportation of people, an activity that culminated in 1916 when the Whirlpool Aero Car was opened in Niagara Falls.