Nikola Tesla named his invention "the teleautonomation" and unvailed it at New York's Madison Square Garden in 1898.  Instead of using infrared rays, as traditional TV remotes do today, Tesla's teleautonomation used radio waves.  He used this device to control a small toy boat during his 1898 public demonstration.  The boat was fitted with a set of antennae to pick up on the radio waves emitted by the remote.  Tesla tried to sell the remote and toy boat as a set commercially, but the public just wasn't that interested.  However, the concept itself was picked up through the years and remote controls can now be found in most homes.  Five years before Tesla's Madison Square Garden demonstration he demonstrated an improved neon light during the Chicago World Fair.  Tesla showed how these lights could be bent and molded to create different words and shapes.  

While many believe that the Italian inventor Guglielmo Marconi first developed the radio, this is actually not the case.  Remember that Tesla used radio waves to operate his teleautomation?  Well, Tesla decided to build the Wardenclyffe Tower, a huge radio transmission tower in Long Island, as soon as he realized the potential of radio.  However, Tesla quickly ran out of funding for the project, and he could not transmit radio waves over long distances.  Marconi essentially beat him to the first long-range radio transmissions.  But, let's not forget that while Tesla could not successfully run his transmission tower (also known as the Tesla Tower), his work in the field of radio transmission added to the tremendous work taking place at the time.  Also, Nikola Tesla invented the AC Motor (alternating current) not Thomas Edison.  He achieved this huge technological feat in 1887 after being given a laboratory space to work in by Alfred S. Brown, a Western Union Superintendent.