Wireless remote control inventor zaps out at 96

The man who took the knobs off the TV set and made a significant innovation in wireless technology, Eugene Polley, died yesterday in Illinois, aged 96. Polley invented the first wireless TV remote control in 1955. Called the Flash-Matic, the remote was produced by US firm Zenith Electronics. The wireless remote has been hailed …

[Mage]

There were of course

Earlier Radios in 1930s with Wireless Remote (one used an actual radio transmitter and a telephone like dial).

Also Earlier US and even UK and European sets did have wired remotes.

But still, a real innovator and as usual El Reg report it far better than the BBC.

Later remotes (the first "clickers") had a tuning fork, which gave way to Modulated Ultrasonic.. Many modern IR remotes actually use the same modulation of the IR as the Ultrasonic frequency and then modulate that modulation with the OOK modulation used on Ultrasonic remotes. (33KHz to 42KHz main "carrier"). This allows good sunlight and Mains flicker avoidance.

[Mage]

Re: There were of course

The BBC R4 report was particularly stupid.

[Shades]

Are they sure he's dead?

Have they tried swapping his batteries round and smacking him against the coffee table?

[mhoulden]

Re: Are they sure he's dead?

They confirmed it by pressing really hard and finding nothing happened.

[TRT]

I remember...

the clicker remotes. We used to hide on the staircase when I was visiting my friend who had one of these sets and clap loudly to annoy his parents or siblings who were trying to watch TV.

Of course, I now want one of the old ray-gun style remotes retrofitted with a modern IR all-in-one remote.

[hi_robb]

New just in.

The Memorial service is taking place on Friday, after which he'll be buried down the back of a sofa..

[TeeCee]

Re: New just in.

....and mourners will be asked to chuck $1.50 in change, some pocket fluff, a few biscuit crumbs, some peanuts, a dead mouse and the crevice nozzle off the vacuum cleaner onto the lid of the coffin.

[Anonymous Coward]

96 isn't bad

Must have been running on Duracell

[Anonymous Coward]

Reader Question

The remote probably has more nicknames than any other household object.

Ours is the doofer

What does it get called in your house?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reader Question

"What does it get called in your house?"

Errm, "the remote control" ? Or if needing to be more specific then "the TV control" or "the TiVo control".

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Reader Question

The remote control? How boring.

In almost every friends house the remote has a different name. The flipper, thingy, effijibob, dibble, and the whojimiwatsit

Must just be us, I was hoping to get a few more in this thread but maybe its not a common thing. I like tweaker, hadn't heard that one.

[oddie]

Re: Reader Question

I'm afraid I just call it 'the remote', but my friend and her family lovingly refer to it as the 'tweaker' :)

[Paul Dx]

Re: Reader Question

Frank - as in zapper

[Poor Coco]

Re: Reader Question

When my daughter was a toddler and mispronouncing everything, she called it “the moot.”

[Rasczak]

Re: Reader Question

We call ours a hoofer, which I suspect is for the same reasons as doofer. Noel Edmonds has a lot to answer for.

[TRT]

Re: Reader Question

I worked at Radio Shack in Canada. On my first day there I was warned that the 'nuks refer to their remote control as "the convertor". It's something to do with cable TV set-top boxes, apparently.

[John H Woods]

Re: Reader Question

"Nottatoy"

[Andyf]

@shades

You, Sir, owe me a keyboard.

Have a beer, and an upvote.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ultrasonics and dogs

I'm sure dogs were glad when ir replaced ultrasonic, mine could definately hear the remote. On the plus side it was sometimes hard to tell if it needed new batteries or was just generally being unreliable, the dog's reaction was one way to tell the difference.

[Steve the Cynic]

Re: Ultrasonics and dogs

We had an ultrasonic one in the very late 70s. I was young enough and the frequencies were low enough that I could actually just barely hear it (well, something, even if it wasn't the control frequencies themselves). It was fun bouncing it off the wall behind you and still getting the TV to react, something an IR remote won't do.

[stucs201]

Re: Ultrasonics and dogs

Yes I used to hear something when young enough too. Ir bouncing does sometimes work, I guess it depends on your walls and/or decor.

[oddie]

Re: Ultrasonics and dogs

depends on the wall... I have still lots of random electronics in my house that I haven't placed properly yet.. (still putting together my 'media solution'... my receiver for instance is facing away from me when I sit on the couch, but a smooth door seems to be enough to reflect the IR signal to hit the sensor :)

tbf it is a bit annoying when someone has left the door open.. the plasterboard wall itself isn't smooth enough to reflect it :(

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Ultrasonics and dogs

My sony IR could bounce off the wall.

[David Gosnell]

Re: Ultrasonics and dogs

Our first rental (remember those, before they were Brighthouse in disguise?) TV with remote was ultrasonic, and picked up interference from the central heating timer, such that channels/volume would change spontaneously. Very glad to go IR with the next one, and that was long before the advent of significant numbers of channels - given that the ultrasonic remote had two buttons, one to toggle mute and the other to increase channel number (fine when there were three).

[FSW]

Don't panic

Logitech probably have a copy of him in their Harmony Remote Database.

[Anonymous Coward]

Fun in Funeral

Apparently they've lost the coffin lid and he's being held in with Sellotape...

[Garry Perez]

Legend

Eugene, I salute you, a brilliant invention by an unknown inventor.

[Wensleydale Cheese]

My parents had a remote control telly in the 1960s

It was a Philips model. The "remote control" was actually a torch which you shone into either of two light sensors, one on each side of the screen. One muted the sound, the other changed channels.

The channels were changed by an electric motor physically rotating the channel knob. It sounded rather like a machine gun as it went through the channels.

[TeeCee]

No problem.

There are actually six Eugene Polleys and three of the others will do everything the lost one did.

[Stuart 22]

Did he forget to patent the corners?

His real achievement was, having invented the remote, to get off the sofa to do anything else.

[Michael Wojcik]

Ah, remote-control nostalgia

I remember using both wired and ultrasonic remotes at friends' homes - probably not the original Zenith products but similar tech brought out later by competitors. The ultrasonic had a clear bottom panel so you could see how the mechanism worked.

My parents were not early adopters, and I well remember having to get up and change channels or volume manually. (There was a bit about this on Married with Children that probably now would seem impossibly dated.) Generally this fell to whoever was unlucky enough to be sitting closest to the set, in a kind of Mechanical-Turk remote-control system.

Since the TV in my parents' bedroom was not remote-controlled, my father wired a switched receptacle and plugged the TV into it so they could turn it on or off without getting out of bed. Couldn't change the channel or volume, but apparently on-and-off was good enough.

Cue Yorkshiremen, and GOML.