New York Times from 1925 – RADIO-DRIVEN AUTO RUNS DOWN ESCORT; Wireless Directs Test Car in Wobbly Course Through Heavy Broadway Traffic. ESCAPES FIRE ENGINE CRASH Defect In Steering Mechanism Blamed for Erratic Action — New Demonstration Planned.
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A radio driven automobile, controlled by apparatus in another motorcar some yards behind, steered a wabbly course through heavy traffic on Broadway and Fifth Avenue yesterday noon, narrowly missing a speeding fire engine and crashing finally into a car in which moving picture men were grinding their cameras.
Blowing its horn, starting the engine, and sliding into its various gears, the radio automobile, as if a phantom hand were at the wheel, began its zig-zag career at Broadway and Sixty-second Street in front of the Hulett Motor Car Company, which supplied the exhibition automobiles. Motorcycle policemen furnished escort to the novel caravan and Francis P. Houdina, demonstrator of the latest use to which wireless has been put, clung to the running board of the leading car, ready to take the wheel in an emergency. A crowd lined the sidewalks to watch.
A loose housing around the shaft to the steering wheel in the radio car caused the uncertain course as the procession got under way. As John Alexander of the Houdina Company, riding in the second car, applied the radio waves, the directing apparatus attached to the shaft in the other automobile failed to grasp it properly.
As a result the radio car careened from left to right, down Broadway, around Columbus Circle, and south on Fifth Avenue, almost running down two trucks and a milk wagon, which took to the curbs for safety. At Forty-seventh Street Houdina lunged for the steering wheel but could not prevent the car from crashing into the fender of an automobile filled with camera men. It was at Forty-third Street that a crash into a fire engine was barely averted. The police advised Houdina to postpone his experiments, but after the car had been driven up Broadway, it was once more operated by radio along Central Park drives.
The telegraph keys of a radio transmitter in the second car controlled the operations. The two radio waves of 109 and 120 meters, each operating one set of circuit breakers, were picked up by apparatus in the tonneau of the radio car.
Another exhibition is to be given today or tomorrow. When the control has been perfected, a tour across the continent will be made, Houdina declared. He is the head of a radio specialty company at 1,426 Broadway.
See original article from the archives of the NYT
