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Post by bixaorellana on May 22, 2012 21:07:11 GMT
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Post by Deleted on May 22, 2012 21:19:42 GMT
One of my American uncles had a Zenith TV dealership, so my grandfather who lived next door to us had a flashlight gun remote control in 1957. It was awesome. He died the following year, perhaps of flashlight poisoning.
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Post by Deleted on May 23, 2012 1:40:53 GMT
;D too funny both of y'all!
I could never remember what the thing was called and always referred to it as "the channel maker".
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Post by bixaorellana on May 23, 2012 2:58:51 GMT
Wow -- who knew 1957 was so advanced!
You can't remember the name of it either?! I've always called it "the flicker".
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Post by Deleted on May 23, 2012 4:54:49 GMT
In spite of having seen this marvel in 1957, I don't think I got my first remote control until about 1985.
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Post by bixaorellana on May 23, 2012 6:28:48 GMT
I think I asked about this earlier, but in an episode of Mad Men that was supposed to take place @1965, Betty is using a remote control for the TV. Is that because she's rich? My dad loved gadgets, but we didn't have a non-human channel changer in our house.
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Post by Deleted on May 23, 2012 7:16:12 GMT
The wiki says that the modern remote control (with things like volume control) wasn't developed until the late 1970's.
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Post by fumobici on May 23, 2012 13:41:45 GMT
I remember my grandparents having a very early color TV that had a remote that operated by sound. The buttons would cause a hammer to strike a reed and the pitch of the tone-s produced- all above human audibility although you could hear some harmonics- told the TV what you wanted it to do. It had on/off and channel up/down. The buttons were hard for my little five year old hands to operate.
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Post by bixaorellana on May 23, 2012 16:51:16 GMT
Cool! Now if we knew when you were born, we could work out what year that was.  It's fascinating is that in a thread with four people responding, two of them know of very early remote control devices. |
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Post by bjd on May 23, 2012 17:05:39 GMT
That's called a selection effect, Bixa. Those of us who know nothing about remote controls aren't participating.
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Post by bixaorellana on May 23, 2012 17:23:38 GMT
Not true. I can't even remember the name of the damned things (in common with the other female participant of this discussion), and I'm participating.
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