Speaker 1: Welcome to brainstud a production of iHeartRadio, Hey Brain Stuff
Speaker 1: Lauren vogelbam here. Remote controls are one of the most
Speaker 1: ubiquitous symbols of our modern technologies. Even if you're the
Speaker 1: sort of minimalist who's consolidated your entertainment system's controls to
Speaker 1: a single remote or a set of smartphone apps, you
Speaker 1: might have another dozen or so around your home. We
Speaker 1: control everything from ceiling fans and air conditioners, to car
Speaker 1: door locks and garage or gate openers, to laundry machines
Speaker 1: and lamps via remote. And this isn't a scientific fact,
Speaker 1: but I think chances are decent that we all have
Speaker 1: one or two remotes permanently lost amid an army of
Speaker 1: dust bunnies in our couches. The most ubiquitous use of
Speaker 1: remotes may be for television control, but these devices far
Speaker 1: pre date TV. They're an invention born of the late
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds. Renowned Serbian American inventor Nikola Tesla created one
Speaker 1: of the world's first wireless remote controls, which he unveiled
Speaker 1: at Madison Square Garden in New York City in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty nine. He called his Fledgling System, which could be
Speaker 1: used to control a range of mechanical contraptions a tele automaton.
Speaker 1: Before his demonstration, Tesla employed a miniature boat controlled by
Speaker 1: radio waves. The boat had a small metal antenna that
Speaker 1: could receive exactly one radio frequency. Tesla sent signals to
Speaker 1: the boat using a box equipped with a lever and
Speaker 1: a telegraph key, originally designed to send Morse code signals.
Speaker 1: The signals generated from this box shifted electrical contacts aboard
Speaker 1: the boat, which in turn adjusted settings for the rudder
Speaker 1: and propeller, allowing the operator to control the boat's motion. Financially,
Speaker 1: Tesla's remote controlled boats were a flop. His intented client,
Speaker 1: the US Navy, thought the technology was too flimsy for war,
Speaker 1: but the concept of remote control caught on shortly after
Speaker 1: Tesla's breakthroughs. Spanish engineer Leonardo Torres Cavedo used wireless telegraph
Speaker 1: transmitters to control first a tricycle, then an engine powered boat,
Speaker 1: and even submarine torpedoes. The work of these inventors was
Speaker 1: a harbinger of things to come. In World War One,
Speaker 1: the German Navy used remotely controlled boats loaded with explosives
Speaker 1: to attack opposition ships. It was the advent of a
Speaker 1: new type of warfare in which armed forces could direct
Speaker 1: armaments from a distance. During World War II, the German
Speaker 1: and American armed militaries also experimented with and deployed a
Speaker 1: range of guided missiles and torpedoes. Beginning in the nineteen thirties,
Speaker 1: a few consumer electronics incorporated remote controls that operated by
Speaker 1: transmitting radio frequency signals like garage door openers, model airplanes,
Speaker 1: and home radios. The first remote controls for radios were wired,
Speaker 1: but in nineteen thirty nine phil Co at the Philadelphia
Speaker 1: Storage Battery Company, offered some of its high end radios
Speaker 1: with a wireless, battery powered remote, which it called the
Speaker 1: Mystery Control. This remote had a spring loaded dial like
Speaker 1: old fashioned telephones do, with ten stops along the dial,
Speaker 1: corresponding to eight preset radio stations, and then volume up
Speaker 1: and volume down. You'd turn the dial to the stop
Speaker 1: you wanted, save the station that played lots of Ella Fitzgerald,
Speaker 1: and let it go. As the dial rotated back to
Speaker 1: its starting position, Each stop would generate a radio frequency
Speaker 1: pulse that was then received by a device in the
Speaker 1: radio cabinet. Based on the number of pulses it received,
Speaker 1: it would know which station to tune to. These remotes
Speaker 1: made a big splash when they debuted, but there are
Speaker 1: a few issues with radio frequency remote technology that prevented
Speaker 1: it from becoming the main choice for home entertainment systems.
Speaker 1: There are a lot of radio signals flying through the
Speaker 1: air at any given time. These remotes were programmed to
Speaker 1: transmit and receive specific frequencies, but there were also a
Speaker 1: growing number of these remotes. Since radio waves can travel
Speaker 1: through walls and for a decent range, interference grew more
Speaker 1: likely the more people adopted these devices. That may be
Speaker 1: why television manufacturers didn't rush to incorporate them when TVs
Speaker 1: became commercially available after World War Two. Before remotes, TV
Speaker 1: viewers had to plod to their televisions to change the
Speaker 1: channel and volume, using rotating dials or buttons. I being
Speaker 1: an old remember sets like this at my grandparents' houses.
Speaker 1: In nineteen fifty, electronics manufacturer's Zeni introduced the Lazybones remote.
Speaker 1: It was the old wired type with a long, snaking
Speaker 1: cable that turned as many ankles as it did channels.
Speaker 1: A few years later, Zenith engineers devised the flash Maatic
Speaker 1: TV remote, which looked like a small pistol and used
Speaker 1: directional flashes of light to control a television settings, but
Speaker 1: the TV's four photo cells, one in each corner of
Speaker 1: the screen, responded to all sorts of light sources, including
Speaker 1: sunlight and ceiling lights, causing spontaneous channel changes. In nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty six, Zenith created the Space Command control, which employed
Speaker 1: high frequency ultrasonic sound instead of light. This new remote
Speaker 1: didn't even require batteries. Instead, it contained tiny hammers to
Speaker 1: strike one of four aluminum rods, creating different sounds to
Speaker 1: be picked up by the TV's receiver. One rod each
Speaker 1: controlled the on and off power functions and the channel
Speaker 1: up and down functions. There was no volume control. This
Speaker 1: style of remote increased the price of a new TV
Speaker 1: by a third, but that didn't stop people from buying
Speaker 1: them in mass quantities. These remotes became known as clickers
Speaker 1: due to the audible click the hammers made when they
Speaker 1: hit the rods. Their ultrasonic frequencies were inaudible to humans,
Speaker 1: but they drove a lot of dogs a little bonkers.
Speaker 1: The drawback to these devices was that they could be persnickety,
Speaker 1: especially if you weren't holding still when you used them.
Speaker 1: That's because of the Doppler effect, which describes how motion
Speaker 1: can change the pitch of sound waves. Remote controls changed
Speaker 1: the way we interacted with our electronic devices, planting us
Speaker 1: like proverbial potatoes and couches with no risk of outside
Speaker 1: distraction or of getting a few steps in by making
Speaker 1: us get up to change a radio station or TV channel.
Speaker 1: It was a time when channel choices were expanding, and
Speaker 1: because viewers tended to click away during commercials or slow scenes,
Speaker 1: TV programs changed as well, with faster pacing to keep
Speaker 1: people continuously engaged, and remotes themselves kept evolving. Ultrasonic remotes
Speaker 1: remain to these standard for televisions and stereos until nineteen eighty,
Speaker 1: which is when remotes began using the infrared light signals
Speaker 1: that are most common today. Infrared light is a part
Speaker 1: of the electromagnetic spectrum that we can't see, but that
Speaker 1: we experience as heat, in this case, very mild heat.
Speaker 1: Infrared remotes work by using that part of the spectrum
Speaker 1: to transmit signals to a receiver in the electronic device
Speaker 1: in question. The little red light that blinks on the
Speaker 1: remote when you push a button is just so that
Speaker 1: you know it's working. The transmitter in the remote sends
Speaker 1: pulses of infrared light that represent specific binary codes, you know,
Speaker 1: a string of ones and zeros. These binary codes correspond
Speaker 1: to commands and such as power on or volume up.
Speaker 1: The receiver in the device decodes the ul of light
Speaker 1: into their representative binary data. A microprocessor in the device
Speaker 1: can understand this data and carry out the corresponding command.
Speaker 1: Infrared remotes work well enough and are cheap enough to
Speaker 1: make that they've stuck around, but they do have some
Speaker 1: limitations based on the fact that they use light signals.
Speaker 1: They therefore have a range of only about thirty feet
Speaker 1: or ten meters, and they require line of sight, which
Speaker 1: is why you sometimes have trouble with a remote if
Speaker 1: an entertainment system's receiver isn't in the most obvious place,
Speaker 1: say it's far to one side instead of right near
Speaker 1: the TV screen. Pretty quickly, by the mid nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: infrared remotes became so common for so many different home
Speaker 1: entertainment devices that electronics companies started producing universal remotes that
Speaker 1: could work with or be programmed specifically for controlling many
Speaker 1: different devices. Think not just televisions and stereos, so cable boxes,
Speaker 1: VCRs or betamax maybe a separate CD player if your
Speaker 1: old stereo didn't come with one, then LaserDisc, satellite television, DVRs, DVDs,
Speaker 1: blu ray, and now streaming service boxes. Remote overload is real,
Speaker 1: and radio frequency remotes never died out, They just specialized.
Speaker 1: These days, radio frequency remotes are used for things that
Speaker 1: benefit from their greater range up to one hundred feet
Speaker 1: or thirty meters, like garage door openers, carfobs, and ceiling fans.
Speaker 1: Modern radio frequency remotes transmit radio waves that correspond to
Speaker 1: the binary command for the button you're pushing. A radio
Speaker 1: receiver on the controlled device receives a signal and decodes it.
Speaker 1: Of course, way more devices are transmitting radio signals these days,
Speaker 1: cell phones, Wi Fi setups, and Bluetooth devices like wireless
Speaker 1: speakers and headphones. Today's radio frequency remotes address the interference
Speaker 1: issue by transmitting at specific radio frequencies and by embedding
Speaker 1: digital address codes in the radio signal. This lets the
Speaker 1: radio receiver on the intended device know when to respond
Speaker 1: to the signal and when to ignore it. Perhaps the
Speaker 1: most universal remote today is a smartphone. With the right
Speaker 1: app and coordinating hardware, you can use your phone to
Speaker 1: unlock a car door, turn household lights on and off
Speaker 1: while you're on vacation, and of course, change channels and
Speaker 1: a lot more on your television, all of which is
Speaker 1: extremely useful. But radio technology has very grand applications as well.
Speaker 1: For example, NASA has relied on radio frequency remote control
Speaker 1: systems to send commands to its MARS rovers, including some
Speaker 1: complex compensation for the Doppler effect. As we continue to
Speaker 1: weave new technologies into our lives, it's likely that we'll
Speaker 1: still need remotes in whatever format to help keep things
Speaker 1: under control. Today's episode is based on the articles what
Speaker 1: is the History of the Remote Control written by Nathan
Speaker 1: Chandler and How Remote Controls Work? Written by Julia Layton
Speaker 1: on HowStuffWorks dot com. Brain Stuff is production of iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: in partnership with HowStuffWorks dot Com and is produced by
Speaker 1: Tyler Klang. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
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