1905: Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres-Quevedo uses a radio remote controller to operate a boat more than a mile away in the Bilbao estuary. The crowd is amazed.

Guglielmo Marconi’s famous wireless demonstration at London’s Toynbee Hall in 1896 used a fixed telegraph-key transmitter to ring a bell attached to a receiver that a colleague carried around the room. You could debate whether ringing a bell is just sending a signal or remotely controlling a device.

Nikola Tesla patented a wireless device for “controlling mechanism of moving vessels or vehicles” in 1898 and demonstrated a r...

This is my first trip to Moscow, and Yuri Milner, the world’s most successful investor in social media, is taking me to his parents’ apartment, which he bills as a typical middle-class Moscow dwelling. It’s drab Soviet brick outside. The none-too-reliable-looking elevator is encircled by a crumbling staircase. But inside, the apartment is genteel and highly recognizable to me. It’s like many you would find on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, a cramped and comfortable set o...