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Remote Control Inventor Eugene Polley Dies at 96
Eugene Polley, inventor of the wireless television remote control, has died at the age of 96, the Associated Press reported Tuesday. Polley died of natural causes on Sunday in a Chicago-area hospital.
The former Zenith engineer's green, gun-shaped Flash-Matic remote control was introduced in 1955, five years after the Zenith Radio Corporation unveiled Lazy Bones, a TV remote that was connected to the set with a wire. By aiming Polley's ray gun-like Flash-Matic (pictured) very precisely at the receiver, one could pull the red trigger to shoot a beam of light at a photoelectric cell to change the channel and adjust the volume.
Unfortunately, the Flash-Matic system proved somewhat flawed, because direct sunlight shining on the receiver's photo cells could also trigger the remote control functions.
But Polley's breakthrough led to a better device developed just a year later by Robert Adler, a fellow engineer at Zenith, which is now owned by LG Electronics. Adler's Zenith Space Command used ultrasound instead of light to trigger functions on the TV receiver. That remote made a signature "clicking" sound when it struck a bar to emit various frequencies that could be detected by the television set.
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Eugene Polley, inventor of the wireless television remote control, has died at the age of 96, the Associated Press reported Tuesday. Polley died of natural causes on Sunday in a Chicago-area hospital.
The former Zenith engineer's green, gun-shaped Flash-Matic remote control was introduced in 1955, five years after the Zenith Radio Corporation unveiled Lazy Bones, a TV remote that was connected to the set with a wire. By aiming Polley's ray gun-like Flash-Matic (pictured) very precisely at the receiver, one could pull the red trigger to shoot a beam of light at a photoelectric cell to change the channel and adjust the volume.
Unfortunately, the Flash-Matic system proved somewhat flawed, because direct sunlight shining on the receiver's photo cells could also trigger the remote control functions.
But Polley's breakthrough led to a better device developed just a year later by Robert Adler, a fellow engineer at Zenith, which is now owned by LG Electronics. Adler's Zenith Space Command used ultrasound instead of light to trigger functions on the TV receiver. That remote made a signature "clicking" sound when it struck a bar to emit various frequencies that could be detected by the television set.
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