I came across one of those "They aren't drones!" type threads about multirotors in the comments for a Youtube video that inspired me to do a tiny amount of research online (searched for "drone" and "aerial" in the part of google that graphs language use over time) and that led me to an interesting article.
Somewhere in my memory I remembered remote controlled aircraft used for target practice being referred to as 'drones', so I was pretty sure that "must be capable of autonomous flight" wasn't (isn't) always part of the definition of the word.
Anyway, more fuel for the fire.
Also, it's interesting browsing through the rest of the issue. There are a few other aviation related bits.
https://books.google.com/books?id=_...g&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q="drone"&f=false
Somewhere in my memory I remembered remote controlled aircraft used for target practice being referred to as 'drones', so I was pretty sure that "must be capable of autonomous flight" wasn't (isn't) always part of the definition of the word.
Anyway, more fuel for the fire.
Also, it's interesting browsing through the rest of the issue. There are a few other aviation related bits.
https://books.google.com/books?id=_...g&ved=0CCwQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q="drone"&f=false