A father of home automation "beams up"
Robert Adler, co-inventor of the remote control and a prolific inventor, died Thursday at the age of 93. Along with inventor and fellow engineer Eugene Polley, Adler helped bring the first commercially successful wireless TV remote -- the Zenith Space Command -- to market in 1956.
Adler and Polley's refinement was ingeniously simple. When a viewer pressed the buttons on the Space Command, tiny hammers struck lightweight aluminum rods to produce high-frequency sounds . . .
The article also talks about a precursor from Zenith called "Lazy Bones" which performed on/off and channel-changing functions via a cord attached to the set, which apparently soon proved to be a safety hazard. While I distinctly recall the two-button Zenith ultrasonic "Space Command" I confess I don't recall the Lazy Bones. It's pretty hard to even *imagine* a TV remote having only two buttons in this day an age, but that's all there was on the Zenith.
-- Bobby G.
read more and respond »Posted 5 years ago by Robert Green in General Home Automation
