Just saw this on Friday. Robert Adler was one of the co-inventor of the TV remote.

The final "Mute" in his long life! Hope he has a "Guide" to see him to his final destination. Would hate to see him get the wrong "Info" and hit the "Down" instead of the "Up" arrow!

Add:

Sorry...could not help it.

May he rest in peace!

He did not die.

He was lost in the couch.

The kids took the batteries for their gameboys!

The first remotes may not have had batteries.
I think they were unpowered mechanical things that had tuning-forks (ultrasonic) as the mechnism. When you pushed one of the buttons, it struk a tuning fork with a little clapper. There were 3 or 4 different size tuning forks, one for each function. The tv set had a microphone and tuned ultrasonic detector to decode the signals from the remote.

Are we not policing this side of the board anymore? This thread would be perfect somewhere else.

...and whenever the family dog starts scratching him/herself, the rattling of dog tags changed TV channels.

Some Magnavox remotes had two buttons that squeezed little chambers, pushing air through ultrasonic whistles. One button was for On/Off/Volume, the other was for VHF channels.

Not to sound disprespectful to the late Mr. Adler (rip), but can you imagine how many layers of lard on the derriers of humanity that invention is responsible for?

"He did not die.

He was lost in the couch."

That's brilliant

If this was a weekday I would have stolen it for my show and totally not credited you ;)

Agreed, great line.

I remember my father telling us youngons that the remote was for "lazy people". Of course, he used it eventually too.

And how many of us have expended tremendous energy to find the darn remote as opposed to walking over to the TV and simply doing the same deed? (I know I have)

The early remotes only had 2 functions.

One to change the channel and one for the volume.

62kgw is correct. There were 2 tuned rods in the remote and when you pushed the button it cocked and fired a little hammer that struck the end of the rod.

The TV had a microphone that was tied to the remote control chassis and when the correct audio frequency was detected by the microphone it would activate a motor that would advance the tuner 1 notch. The tuners in the TV's of that vintage were all mechanical. You would turn it and as you did a drum with tuned "sticks" in it would rotate into place.

Of course, most of the TV's back then were all tubes too!

Most?

There was some mechnical keys in the tuner that could be set to skip over the unused channels. You could only go clockwise.

Then there was the "Predicta", and perhaps others where the Tuner and volume, etc was in a seperate box than you could put on endtable next to couch. There was a thick cord that connected to the other box where the picture tube was.

One model of the Predicta was unique... the whole chassis was in the "remote box":

http://www.tvhistory.tv/1959-Philco-brochure3.jpg

Some other sets just had a tuner and volume control in a much smaller box that connected to a conventional TV set with a cord.

A little info here about Robert Adler and his remote:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Adler

62, you’re right! I had forgotten about that. It's been so long since I worked on (or have even seen) one of those TV's!

Back then console TV's were made of real wood and were considered a piece of furniture.

I can remember replacing picture tubes in customer’s sets and the bill would be $400+ depending on whether they wanted a "black matrix" picture tube or just the regular one.

Nowadays, I doubt there would be any reason to repair a TV, much less replace a picture tube.

I've been using my old Commodore 1902 (12") monitor hooked to the video output of an old VCR as a TV in my garage for years. It finally died the other day and I went to Best Buy and bought a 20" stereo TV for $99!

They're just not worth fixing anymore!

omigosh I'm so bored, I'm about to throw up.

I am applauding this thread!!! We have reached a peak that I thought impossible only a year ago. We can post about absolutely nothing and find great entertainment. We should all raise a toast in our honor. Good for us!!

Agreed!

An uncle had a Zenith with an older mechanical remote. I managed to get my hands on it for an afternoon. (He guarded that thing like it was gold!)

Took the back off of it, and found a spring loaded system where pressing down on the button whacked a metal bar, tuned to resonate at a specific frequency. There were two bars, one for the channel and one for the power.

That remote used sounds above 16K, but below 22K. My hearing, at that time, went nearly to 22, and the highest bar was near the upper limit. I'm sure it didn't do my ears much good to click the button with it near my head, but I did anyway.

After toying with that, I put it back together and went digging through the tool shed for various bits of metal, some string and a hammer!

Found some smaller end wrenches that resonated loud enough and close enough to change the channel. Hold it by the string and whack it with the hammer and that's all it took.

Pissed my uncle off huge! Wait until a good ball game was on, then change the channel from upstairs! Took him quite a while to associate his new TV problem with us coming over. I know he called the tech at least once before discovering it only happened when it would really annoy him, and we were over for dinner!

About a year later, a friend ended up with remote control car that would change direction when you clicked a button.

Same deal, only that system used a tuned stainless steel metal formed "pop" button that would resonate a tuned metal support attached to it.

Same frequency range, but right at the top. Could barely hear that one. It had far better range than the TV remote did.

Interestingly, I never could find something that would trigger the car. I suspect what I heard was a harmonic with the actual sound being outside human range. The support was not a simple shape either. It might have generated a coupla tones together.

My first remote TV was in about 1982. Bought it used from a hospital. No ultrasonic hammers, it had the big corded remote, like they used to clip to your pillow when you were recovering from surgery.

It was a great TV, but whenever I sat too close, I'd get sick...