A radio-controlled model (or RC model) is a model that is steerable with the use of radio control. All types of vehicles imaginable have had RC systems installed in them, including cars, boats, planes, and even helicopters and scale railway locomotives.
Radio control has been around since Nikola Tesla demonstrated a remote control boat in 1898. World War II saw increased development in radio control technology. The Luftwaffe used controllable winged bombs for targeting Allied ships. During the 1930s the Good brothers Bill and Walt pioneered vacuum tube based control units for R/C hobby use. Their "Guff" radio controlled plane is on display at the National Aerospace museum. Ed Lorenze published a design in Model Airplane News that was built by many hobbyists. Later, after WW2, in the late 1940s to mid 1950 many other R/C designs emerged and some were sold commercially, Berkeley's Super Aerotrol, was one such example.
Originally simple 'on-off' systems, these evolved to use complex systems of relays to control a rubber powered escapement's speed and direction. In another more sophisticated version developed by the Good brothers called TTPW, information was encoded by varying the signal's mark/space ratio (pulse proportional). Commercial versions of these systems quickly became available. The tuned reed system brought new sophistication, using metal reeds to resonate with the transmitted signal and operate one of a number of different relays. In the 1960s the availability of transistor-based equipment led to the rapid development of fully proportional servo-based "digital proportional" systems, achieved initially with discrete components, again driven largely by amateurs but resulting in commercial products. In the 1970s, integrated circuits made the electronics small, light and cheap enough for the 1960's-established multi-channel digital proportional systems to become much more widely available.
Radio control (often abbreviated to R/C or simply RC) is the use of radio signals to remotely control a device. Radio control is used for control of model vehicles from a hand-held radio transmitter. Industrial, military, and scientific research organizations make use of radio-controlled vehicles as well.
In 1898, at an exhibition at Madison Square Garden, Nikola Tesla demonstrated a small unmanned boat that was radio controlled. In a bit of showmanship, Tesla entertained the audience to make it seem that the boat could apparently obey commands from the audience but it, was in fact, controlled by Tesla interpreting the verbal requests and sending appropriate frequencies to tuned circuits in the boat. John Hays Hammond Jr is regarded as the father of radio control due to experiments as an apprentice of Thomas Edison at the age of twelve. Hammond was a close friend of Tesla and they performed experiments together in his lab located in his castle. He learned a great deal from his exposure to Tesla. Tesla was granted a US patent on this invention on July 1, 1898. In 1903, the Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres y Quevedo presented the "Telekino" at the Paris Academy of Science, and was granted a patent in France, Spain, Great Britain and the United States. In 1904, Bat, a Windermere steam launch, was controlled using experimental radio control by its inventor, Jack Kitchen.