Inventor of the TV remote dies

BOISE, Idaho - Hit the mute button for a moment of silence: The co-inventor of the TV remote, Robert Adler, has died.


Adler, who won an Emmy Award along with fellow engineer Eugene Polley for the device that made the couch potato possible, died Thursday of heart failure at a Boise nursing home at 93, Zenith Electronics Corp. said Friday.

In his six-decade career with Zenith, Adler was a prolific inventor, earning more than 180 U.S. patents. He was best known for his 1956 Zenith Space Command remote control, which helped make TV a truly sedentary pastime



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070217/ap_on_re_us/obit_adler



Thank you Mr. Alder for the Clicker and the extra ten pounds I carry:cry:

A friend of mine was ostracized while attending school in Scotland for maintaining there was such a thing as a remote control: also, his wild stories of "color television" and "cars with automatic transmissions" contributed to his heresy!

Tut-tut

when we only had a few channels: 2(CBS), 4(NBC), 5(WNEW), 7(ABC), 9(WOR), 11(WPIX), and 13(WNET).

It was clunky, it was loud (the whole apartment knew you were changing channels -- the remote nickname "clicker" stems from that time) and when you pressed the button to change the channel, it turned the tuner knob. So, "channel surfing" was unheard of then; you had to wait a second between presses of the button, or you might damage the tuner.

On edit: on the plus side, you could change channels from around the corner of the door. :evilgrin:

Just a little personal history for you youngsters. :)

I don't know how many times I'd have to get up and change the TV channel for my parents.

:D

watching Olbermann while holding my remote.

This guy is a true unsung hero to all American Males!

RIP.

bah dum *tiss*

It operated using the energy derived from your finger pushing the spring-loaded button, slightly similar to how electronic lighters work.

changed to batteries ´cos it burnt too many calories, or because it didn't ¨consume¨

too many 'false signals' from other devices. (There was also the Flashmatic, which used light signals and had its own interference issues from other lighting sources; it too, needed batteries.) The change was later made to electronic/infrared signals, which required power.

By the early 1980s, the industry moved to infrared, or IR, remote technology. The IR remote works by using a low frequency light beam, so low that the human eye cannot see it, but which can be detected by a receiver in the TV. Zenith's development of cable-compatible tuning and teletext technologies in the 1980s greatly enhanced the capabilities and uses for infrared TV remotes.

http://www.zenith.com/sub_about/about_remote.html

my grandmother had one of the very early ones.

near ultrasonic. small metal objects like keys make those kinds of sounds easily.

My sister and her husband got an early remote. My nephew was only about 2 years old at the time. They had fastened little bells onto the laces of his shoes, but whenever he ran through the livingroom, the channel would change.

I believe after a few times of this, they took the bells off.

at the sound of jangeling keys or sweeping the rug. It was always changing at the worst possible moment.

It worked okay. The TV was like a 1981 model, this old lady's first (and only) TV

in a way, it reminded me of those 'cricket' things that john wayne gave to the soldiers for identifying each other in "The Longest Day".

I know, I know. Sorry.

:-)

Oh, horribly, horribly tastless....

He couldn't find someone he like for more than a few minutes.

My family had a black and white into the 70s.

otherwise known as his children. He'd call the nearest kid in to come to change the channel.

Although you did contribute to making Americans even fatter.

:hi:

remote control?

the designated channel-changers unless we were off doing homework.

I wasn't aware the inventor of the remote was an Idahoan, kind of appropriate when considering that Philo Farnsworth (his real name!), the inventor of television was as well.

:rofl:

or what?

Along with the inventors of fire, the wheel, and beer.

My first cable box had a pushbutton for each channel.
When the cable guy was installing it he asked me how long a cable I wanted on the box.
"I can put you a 20' cable on it and you can change channels from the couch without getting up."
Whoa!

And we had a 20' cord on our kitchen phone (Yes, we actually had a phone installed IN THE KITCHEN!) so you could walk around and cook and still talk on the phone.
Way cool.
;-)

He had the chance to invent this.

"I managed to wipe out all the men in my building. I didn't kill them. I just stole all their remote controls and they killed themselves"

My one satellite remote is UHF instead of IR, so I can change the living room TV channel from the dining room. It's a good time to be me.

The Mr isn't happy sitting in front of the television without the remote in his hand, flicking endlessly through the channels. Therefore I don't sit in front of the TV, its far too annoying. And he's welcome to it. There's very little worth watching anyhow.

On a black-and-white console TV. The VHF tuner was mechanical, powered by a strong electric motor that only turned one direction - To go from channel 3 to channel 2 it went all the way around, clockwise.

The remote control would look primitive today, but it worked well for many years.

The picture was pretty good on that TV. We watched the broadcast of the first walk on the moon on it on July 20, 1969.

Our 12-inch Admiral had four knobs: channel selector; on/off/volume; horizontal hold; and vertical hold.

The last two were very tricky. In the middle of a TV program, it was common for the TV picture to get skewed - either laterally from left to right - or the picture would roll vertically. Every time that happened, which was quite often, there was no option but to get up from your chair, walk across the room, and fiddle with either of those two knobs. Also, once you finished adjusting the picture and sat back down, it was all but inevitable you'd have to get up again - immediately. This was non-ending.

I remember a commercial for a TV set back then when the remote control first came out. There was a little jingle: "Sit down, George!" "No, I can't sit down…"