Raúl Casado
Madrid, Feb 3 (EFE) .- In times of artificial intelligence, supercomputing and quantum communications, a small but sophisticated gadget, known as “the infinite machine” and designed by the engineer, mathematician and Spanish inventor Leonardo Torres Quevedo, still It aroused many unknowns and its purpose and functioning seemed indecipherable.
The infinite “spindle” is part of Torres Quevedo’s legacy and is deposited at the headquarters of the Royal Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences of Spain, and Professor César Palencia, of the Department of Applied Mathematics of the University of Valladolid, The machine has scrutinized, because without the appropriate keys, that operation and its purposes can be absolutely incomprehensible.
And he has done so to corroborate that the machine that designed one of the most great inventors of the late nineteenth and early twentie very complex and using the logarithmic scale.
The ingenuity – which has been restored “almost” by Professor César Palencia – uses endless mechanisms, such as discs and rotating screws, which makes the variations of all the variables that are capable of making are practically unlimited, and With him the Spanish engineer traveled on several occasions to France to show the scientific community of what his “modern” calculation machine was capable.
The machine allowed “unthinkable” operations and calculations to Security One of the demonstrative models that the engineer used and that gadget is part of a much greater gear.
In that career to develop algebric machines capable of solving complex mathematical equations, prestigious researchers of the time had already been involved, including the British Charles Babbage, but that of Torres Quevedo was considered as the culmination of that intellectual and scientific challenge and his “spindle “And its infinite mechanisms a milestone in the technological production of the time.
For all that, Leonardo Torres Quevedo is considered one of the precursors of robotics, cybernetics and computer science; Because to the recovered “Infinite Machine” adds the “Telekino”, an antecedent of the first remote control and with which he came to make several demonstrations of distance boat maneuvers; or because he patented the “Binave”, precursor of the current Catamaranes.
Because he developed ferry and funicular, including the Niágara cataract spanish aerocate (Canada) -the oldest cable car in the world and still in operation; or because he designed and built a chess robot to try to demonstrate that the intellectual capacity of the machines could be increased to replace people in work until then reserved for human intelligence.
All this several decades before the first computers and computers begin to develop; And many years before scientists and technologists around the world begin to launch research projects related to artificial intelligence, considered today as the most disruptive and challenging technology.
Proud and satisfied next to the “infinite machine” whose keys has been able, in addition to restor Torres Quevedo and his deep knowledge of science, technology and the needs of his time.
And in statements to Efe, he values that his work turned to ideas that were always viable to solve problems of interest at that time, and that it was a prolific inventor, but that he struggled mostly because his conceptual ideas were accompanied by concrete realizations , and for providing “very novel” solutions to some problems and challenges of the time.
Cables, airships, calculation machines, remote or chess control devices; The math professor applied at the University of Valladolid César Palencia does not hesitate to place him as “founder” and precursor of what is now called “automatic”, and maintains that the “endless spindle” that looks restored in the Academy of Sciences is Only the practical and effective realization of one of his brightest and most ingenious ideas. EFE
