This device is considered one of the genious inventions of XX century. It has made our lives much easier. Fancy that after a long working day you can rest peacefully on a sofa, you don’t have to come up to your regular favourite TV-set. Just one click – and you are immersed of the world of adventures or soap operas with your favourite fiction characters! You can observe the magic world of wizards and witches, travell to faraway countries eating your favourite food and little by little gaining extra weight… But well, the talk is about one of the most outstanding devices of our time – the remote control!
Everybody can imagine the picture what I described in the previous paragraph but what do we know about them? For example, the term remote control can be contracted to remote or controller. It is known by many other names as well, such as clicker, flipper or the changer. Sometimes very usual things around us can contain a lot of objects of curiosity (here we can’t apply a proverb “Curiosity killed the cat”). Never lose chance to be surprised!
At first, a bit of history: One of the earliest examples of remote control was developed in 1898 by Nikola Tesla, and described in his patent, U.S. Patent 613,809, named Method of an Apparatus for Controlling Mechanism of Moving Vehicle or Vehicles.
In 1903, Leonardo Torres Quevedo presented the Telekino at the Paris Academy of Science, accompanied by a brief, and making an experimental demonstration. In the same time he obtained a patent in France, Spain, Great Britain, and the United States. The Telekino consisted of a robot that executed commands transmitted by electromagnetic waves. It constituted the world's first apparatus for radio control and was a pioneer in the field of remote control. In 1906, in the presence of the king and before a great crowd, Torres successfully demonstrated the invention in the port of Bilbao, guiding a boat from the shore. Later, he would try to apply the Telekino to projectiles and torpedoes, but had to abandon the project for lack of financing.
The first remote-controlled model aeroplane flew in 1932, and the use of remote control technology for military purposes was worked intensively during the Second World War, one result of this being the German Wasserfall missile.
By the late 1930s, several radio manufacturers offered remote controls for some of their higher-end models. Most of these were connected to the set being controlled by wires, but the Philco Mystery Control (1939) was a battery-operated low-frequency radio transmitter, thus making it the first wireless remote control for a consumer electronics device.
This information was about remote controls in general but now – to the point - about our favourite television remote controls! The first remote intended to control a television was developed by Zenith Radio Corporation in 1950. The remote — officially called "Lazy Bones" was connected to the television set by a wire. To improve the cumbersome setup, a wireless remote control called "Flashmatic" was developed in 1955 which worked by shining a beam of light onto a photoelectric cell. Unfortunately, the cells did not distinguish between light from the remote and light from other sources and the Flashmatic also required that the remote control be pointed very accurately at the receiver.
In 1956 Robert Adler developed "Zenith Space Command", a wireless remote. It was mechanical and used ultrasound to change the channel and volume. When the user pushed a button on the remote control it clicked and struck a bar, hence the term "clicker". The receiver contained a microphone attached to a circuit that was tuned to the same frequency. Some problems with this method were that the receiver could be triggered accidentally by naturally occurring noises, and some people, especially young women, could hear the piercing ultrasonic signals. There was even a curious incident in which a toy xylophone changed the channels on these types of TVs since some of the overtones from the xylophone matched the remote's ultrasonic frequency.
The impetus for a more complex type of television remote control came in the late 1970s with the development of the Ceefax teletext service by the BBC. Most commercial remote controls at that time had a limited number of functions, sometimes as few as three: next channel, previous channel, and volume/off.
The introducing of remote controls gave power to viewers – they could change the channel easily and they didn’t have to see the same program because, for example, they were tired or just too lazy to approach a TV-set and push the button to change the program. From them on everything was literally “in their hands”.
The invention of a remote control also changed the structure of television. At first it resulted in the creation of split screen credit. It was noticed that when the credits started rolling after a program, 25% of its viewers would change the channel before it was over. Because of this, the NBC 2000 unit invented the “squeeze and tease” which squeezed the credits onto one third of the screen while the final minutes of the broadcast aired simultaneously.
The remote control also led to an adjustment in commercial airings. Networks began to feel that they could not afford to have commercials between programs because it would detract viewers from staying tuned in on their channel. Programmers decided to place commercials in the middle of programs in order to make the transition to the next show directly.
From then on many networks had to keep in mind that the viewers were equipped with remotes and could change a channel in fraction of a second that’s why the thirty-second advertisement spots which could be too boring or long were cut down into segments of eight seconds or less.
Some time later the new kinds of remote controls appeared. In the 1980s Steve Wozniak of Apple, started a company named CL 9. The purpose of this company was to create a remote control which could operate multiple electronic devices. The CORE unit as it was named (Controller Of Remote Equipment) was introduced in the fall of 1987. The advantage to this remote controller was that it could “learn” remote signals from other different devices. It also had the ability to perform specific or multiple functions at various times with its built in clock. That remote was also steeped in history of computers. It was also the first remote control which could be linked to a computer. The CORE unit never made a huge impact of the market. Though it was much too cumbersome for the average user to program it received rave reviews from those who could figure out how to program it. These obstacles eventually lead to the demise of CL 9, but one of its employees continued the business under the name Celadon. This was one of the first computer controlled learning remote controls on the market.
Nowadays we cannot imagine us without electrical devices that make our life easier and comfortable. Every time they become more and more complicated and many devices require a special controller for them. The usage of numerous remotes became more inconvenient that is why famous inventors realized the necessity of universal remote control and nowadays they are becoming more and more popular.
The final Curious © phrase:
“The path of duty lies in what is near at hand, but men look for it in what is remote”
(Japanese Proverb)
