Leonardo Torres Quevedo was a Spanish civil engineer, mathematician, and inventor of the late 19th century and early 20th century. A member of the Royal Spanish Academy since 1920, he was also a corresponding member of the French Academy of Sciences, among other institutions. Torres was a prolific and versatile innovator in various fields of engineering, including mechanics, aeronautics and automatics. One of his greatest achievements was El Ajedrecista of 1912, an electromagnetic device capable of playing a limited form of chess that demonstrated the capability of machines to be programmed to follow specified rules (heuristics) and marked the beginnings of research into the development of artificial intelligence.

A catamaran is a watercraft with two parallel hulls of equal size. The distance between a catamaran's hulls imparts resistance to rolling and overturning. Catamarans typically have less hull volume, smaller displacement, and shallower draft (draught) than monohulls of comparable length. The two hulls combined also often have a smaller hydrodynamic resistance than comparable monohulls, requiring less propulsive power from either sails or motors. The catamaran's wider stance on the water can reduce both heeling and wave-induced motion, as compared with a monohull, and can give reduced wakes.