History
Radio controlled combat of warships owes its popularity to a small group of men living in Texas (USA) in the late 1970s. The founding fathers of the hobby are Stan Watkins, D.W. Fluegel, and Jeff Poindexter. Back in the day, these men "toyed" with the idea of using radio controlled ships and equipping them with some kind of cannon so that they could then engage in combat.
After much efforts, Stan created the "Mark I" cannon using an odd variety of plumbing parts and pieces. In those days, freon was used as a propelling agent and often their engagements resulted in little if any damage. After some time, and more engineering, they were able to "sink" an opponent in combat by shooting steel balls through balsa hulls. Organized groups formed very quickly after this achievement, with the formation of the IRCWCC, and Big Gun groups starting up in 1982 with the formation of NASWCA.
From this inauspicious beginning and after years of technological advances, the hobby has improved dramatically in both reliability and playability. Many different groups having formed, fighting scale model warships ranging from the reasonably rare 1:48 scale to the most common 1:144 scale, with different and largely regional variations on the rules used.
Read more about this topic: Model Warship Combat
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The History of the world is not the theatre of happiness. Periods of happiness are blank pages in it, for they are periods of harmony—periods when the antithesis is in abeyance.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“No matter how vital experience might be while you lived it, no sooner was it ended and dead than it became as lifeless as the piles of dry dust in a school history book.”
—Ellen Glasgow (1874–1945)
“Indeed, the Englishman’s history of New England commences only when it ceases to be New France.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)