Inventor of the TV remote dies
The inventor of the TV remote, Eugene Polley, died on Sunday at 96.
After his death was announced on Tuesday, the Internet paused — get it? — to remember the man and the wireless television remote control, which ushered in the era of channel surfing and couch potatoes.
Some tributes were humorous. Others were fawning.
“Gush all you want about Facebook, Twitter and other recent tech innovations. I’d stack Polley and his TV remote against all of them,” wrote David Lazarus at LATimes.com. “After all, which would you be more willing to give up — Facebook or your remote? … Thought so.”
Polley, who died of “natural causes,” according to a news release, invented Zenith’s “Flash-Matic” wireless remote control, which was introduced in 1955 and was heralded as the first of its kind. “It used a flashlight-like device to activate photocells on the television set to change channels,” the Zenith news release says.
In the 1950s, the mechanics of using a remote were a little clunky:
“The viewer used a highly directional flashlight to activate the four control functions, which turned the picture and sound on and off and changed channels by turning the tuner dial clockwise and counterclockwise,” Zenith says.
Rosa Golijan from MSNBC writes that eccentricities always have been part of the remote control and its odd history:
“Because the remote shined visible light, TVs could be confused by other light sources. In spite of its quirkiness, the Flash-Matic was a revolution, and the reason Polley was bestowed with humorous titles ranging from ‘the founding father of the couch potato’ to ‘the czar of zapping’ to ‘the beach boy of channel surfing.’ “
And an advertisement from that era underscores just how new this invention was.
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