The chess device was really interesting, but two things caught my eye about this fellow: 1) he lived and conducted some of his experiments in my old home of Bilbao, Spain and 2) he built a very early radio-control system that used — in the receiver — a coherer as the detector.
There is a lot material on Torres Quevedo. Here is just a sample of what is out there
His book: https://www.torresquevedo.org/revistas/index.php/BIB/issue/view/12/1. Discussion of the Telekino device is on pages 109-127.
The Branly Tube or Coherer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coherer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_Torres_Quevedo
https://cyberneticzoo.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/Telekine-Yuste.pdf
1903 article in Electron (Spain) about the Telekino and Coherers. https://hemerotecadigital.bne.es/hd/viewer?oid=0028654330&page=6
https://alpoma.net/tecob/?p=13766 This article contains the diagram of the device (see above). You can see the coherer with its tapper.
Thank you Bill. Very Cool! Torres Quevedo was not the first person to do these experiments btw: Tesla sold remote controlled torpedoes somewhere around 1898 or 1899(!)