history of drones

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Nikola Tesla is testing his radio controlled boat for the first time in a New York pond in Madison Square Garden, to the amazement of the crowd. He was able to even control the lights on his RC boat, making the people think he was either a magician or that a small monkey was inside, controlling the craft.

This is the beginning of every radio-controlled aircraft as we know it today, thanks to the genius of Tesla.

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1898 - First Radio - Controlled Boat by Nikola Tesla

Britain’s Aerial Target, a small radio-controlled aircraft, was first tested in March 1917 while the American aerial torpedo known as the Kettering Bug first flew in October 1918. Although both showed promise in flight tests, neither were used operationally during the war.​

1916 - First UAV developed by Britain - Aerial Target

Etienne Omnichen invented the first working quadcopter, called the Omnichen 2 and it managed to fly for 360m, establishing a new world record. In the same year he flew for 1 km circle in 7 minutes and 40 seconds.

People were looking for an alternative to helicopters,as their tail rotor consumes between 10-15% of the engine power without generating any thrust.

1920 - First Quadcopter - Omnichen 2

It's thought the term 'drone' started to be used at this time, inspired by the name of one of these models, the DH.82B Queen Bee. Radio-controlled drones were also manufactured in the United States and used for target practice and training.
The Queen Bee is considered by many to be the first modern drone, even though it looked more like a plane.

Here you can see prime minister Winston Churchill attending a flight test of the first drone.

1935 - Inception of the term “drone”

While the first ever Model RC Plane competition was held in 1937, where Elmer Wasman placed third with his RC plane “White Mistery”, the RC planes were facing serious controllability issues. 

In 1938, the first successful RC model plane was seen flying. It’s called “Big Guff” and it was built by the Walt and Bill Good. For trivia purposes, it also appeared in a film by the Academy of Model Aeronautic that I have posted down below.

1938 - First successful Model Radio Control Airplane

Thanks to miniaturized transistor technology, model RC planes had a dramatic boom in sales during this decade and got popularized by hobbyists. This was perhaps the boost needed to speed the development of today's commercial RC tech.

1960 - Boom in model RC Planes

Probably the easiest to recognise military drone to this day is the famous Predator, which was used in Afghanistan to launch missles and search for Osama Bin Laden. The drone operated at an altitude of 25,000 ft and had a maximum range of 740km, while being able to fly for 40 hours.

1996 - Famous Predator US drone was introduced

First industrial and commercial uses of quadcopters and other UAVs had it’s infancy with the first commercial drone permit released by the FAA. For the following 8 years they issued an average of 2 permits per year.

The same year, Frank Wang, a mainland-born student at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology has an idea to revolutionize how useful quadcopters are for the mainstream population. The company is called DJI.

2006- First commercial drone permit by FAA - DJI was founded