The mystery of the radio-controlled American Wonder

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Whether you call it self-driving mode, auto-pilot or radio-control, or use the more poetic ‘phantom auto’ or more prosaic ‘autonomous car’, the idea of the car that doesn’t need a driver is almost as old as the radio and automobile industry itself. This picture dates back to 1928 and was taken in Washington but comes with little further information. The original caption reads: ‘Photograph shows a man, standing in the street next to an automobile, holding presumably a remote control; a control box is on the running board of the car.’ Yes, this is believed to be a radio-controlled car.

Isn’t it odd that there are no further facts to hand? We only found a little more about a man named Francis P. Houdina, a former U.S. Army electrical engineer who founded the Houdina Radio Control Co. in Wisconsin and built one such radio-controlled car a few years earlier, which was supposedly called the American Wonder: ‘He rigged a 1926 Chandler sedan with a transmitting antenna, and the radio signals it received operated small electric motors that controlled the vehicle’s speed and direction. A crew trailing closely behind in a second vehicle controlled the phantom Chandler.’

During a demonstration in New York in 1925, Houdina’s driverless car is said to have crashed into another vehicle parked at 47th Street and filled with photographers documenting the event. That didn’t stop Houdina from touring the country to demonstrate his Chandler, though. From one report: ‘The effect is uncanny and mystifying and the complete demonstration is one of the most spectacular street events possible.’

This car here is not a Chandler, but could the man be Francis Houdina with a later incarnation of his American Wonder?

Words: Jeroen Booij; picture: Library of Congress/Underwood & Underwood
 

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