Louis Brennan, born in Castlebar (County Mayo, Ireland), patents in 1877 in Melbourne a torpedo guided by two steel cables wound on internal spools: pulling differentially on the cables from shore controlled direction and speed in real time. He patents the design in Australia and then in the United Kingdom. The British War Office buys it for £110,000 in 1883 — the largest sum paid up to then for a military patent — and classifies it as secret for years. It is one of the first actively remote-controlled guided weapon systems in history, predating Torres Quevedo's Telekino (1903). Brennan continued inventing: he also developed a gyroscopic monorail (1907) and an early helicopter (1919).