Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class, A production
Speaker 1: of iHeartRadio. Hello Owen, Welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Speaker 1: Frye and I'm Tracy V. Wilson. Uh. This is another
Speaker 1: one of those episodes that was intended to be an assortment,
Speaker 1: a collection of things, and then it became about just
Speaker 1: one of those things. Yeah. I was planning to write
Speaker 1: about three or maybe four very mundane things that we
Speaker 1: use every day in our lives and their origins. But
Speaker 1: then when I got to the story of the TV
Speaker 1: remote control, I discovered there was a drama. Uh. In
Speaker 1: some ways, it's a one sided drama, but we'll talk
Speaker 1: about it. This is one that's really relatable, I think
Speaker 1: probably for anyone that has worked for a big company
Speaker 1: and has felt like their contributions are lauded one moment
Speaker 1: and forgotten the next. I think a lot of us
Speaker 1: can relate to that. But it is also a story
Speaker 1: about how two very different people perceive their work in
Speaker 1: the same space, and how, in some cases that work
Speaker 1: is perceived differently over time by those around them and
Speaker 1: even their employer. The initial time period where a TV
Speaker 1: remote control was being developed was actually pretty short. We
Speaker 1: recently talked about spray paint and how that had multiple
Speaker 1: options of people that get credited as the person that
Speaker 1: are over literal decades. But this is like within eighteen months,
Speaker 1: two people emerged, each of whom sometimes are called the
Speaker 1: father of the remote control and one of those versions
Speaker 1: that they created quickly supplanted the other. So we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about those very early years and the way
Speaker 1: that two inventors who were pivotal to the story have
Speaker 1: been talked about in different ways by the company that
Speaker 1: they both worked for. So we're starting a little earlier
Speaker 1: than that, which is that in eighteen ninety eight, Nikola
Speaker 1: Tesla received a patent for a remote control device. His
Speaker 1: patent called this method of and apparatus for controlling mechanism
Speaker 1: of moving vessels or vehicles. This invention was for quote,
Speaker 1: controlling from a distance the operation of the propelling engines,
Speaker 1: the steering apparatus and other mechanism carried by moving bodies
Speaker 1: or floating vessels, of which the following is a specification
Speaker 1: reference being had to the drawings accompanying and forming part
Speaker 1: of the same That remote is not specifically germane to
Speaker 1: the technology that we're talking about today, but it's illustrative
Speaker 1: of the ways that people were thinking about using remote
Speaker 1: controls well before televisions were even invented. We talked about
Speaker 1: TV's invention in our twenty thirteen episode on Filot Farnsworth,
Speaker 1: So jumping ahead from that moment more than one hundred years.
Speaker 1: A two thousand and six write up about Eugene Polly
Speaker 1: in the Atlantic City newspaper The Press reads, quote, fifty
Speaker 1: years ago, Polly invented the wireless remote. In return, he
Speaker 1: got one thousand dollars and a lifetime of gnawing irritation
Speaker 1: at being squeezed out of pop culture history. Now he's
Speaker 1: trying to set the record straight. And in that article,
Speaker 1: Polly told the paper quote, not only did I not
Speaker 1: get credit for doing anything, I got a kick in
Speaker 1: the rear. So I stumbled upon this and said, what
Speaker 1: is the backstory here? Suggest that there was drama? M
Speaker 1: Eugene Theodore Polly was born on November twenty ninth, nineteen fifteen,
Speaker 1: in Chicago. His mother, Vera Wachowski, was from a wealthy family,
Speaker 1: but his father was a bootlegger. When Eugene was born,
Speaker 1: Vera's family had cut off most contact with her because
Speaker 1: of her connection to Eugene's father, but his father did
Speaker 1: not stay around either. The two of them were separated
Speaker 1: when Eugene was still really young. This is often described
Speaker 1: as his father abandoning Vera and Eugene. His father's first
Speaker 1: name is really never mentioned in any accounts of Eugene's life,
Speaker 1: and later Eugene started using his confirmation name of Joseph
Speaker 1: as his middle name. Yeah. I don't know if Theodore
Speaker 1: was perhaps tied to his father in any way. That's
Speaker 1: sheer speculation on my part, but there is definitely an
Speaker 1: unwillingness to include any of that kind of discussion in
Speaker 1: any stories of his life. Finances were very, very tight,
Speaker 1: but Vera and Eugene got by together. And Eugene was
Speaker 1: very clearly a super smart kid. He just had a
Speaker 1: mind for all things mechanical. And after high school he
Speaker 1: attended City Colleges of Chicago and then he went on
Speaker 1: to the Armor Institute to study engineering. The Armor Institute
Speaker 1: is the Illinois Institute of Technology today. But Polly wasn't
Speaker 1: able to finish his studies and he didn't get his
Speaker 1: engineering degree. The depression was making life harder and harder,
Speaker 1: and his mother just needed help keeping their life together financially,
Speaker 1: so Eugene joined the workforce. In nineteen thirty five, twenty
Speaker 1: year old Eugene got hired by Zenith Radio Corporation and
Speaker 1: he started there as a parts clerk. He didn't stay
Speaker 1: in the stock room, though, he was eventually able to
Speaker 1: move into the company's engineering department, and then he kept
Speaker 1: moving up from there. He became a product engineer and
Speaker 1: eventually moved into management and the mechanical engineering group. Zena's founder,
Speaker 1: another Eugene. That's Eugene McDonald, started pushing his engineers to
Speaker 1: come up with something that would enable viewers to not
Speaker 1: have to endure commercials. This was in nineteen fifty. Apparently McDonald,
Speaker 1: who had the nickname the Commander by his employees, uh,
Speaker 1: just hated commercials and he figured most other viewers did too.
Speaker 1: That's usually how this is reported, and it sounds like
Speaker 1: kind of a feel good story about a captain of
Speaker 1: industry fighting for the interests of his consumers. But it's
Speaker 1: a little more complicated than that. McDonald thought that ad
Speaker 1: supported television was not going to last, and moreover, he
Speaker 1: did not want it to last, and that was in
Speaker 1: part because Zenith was developing an early pay per view
Speaker 1: business model, which would have competed with ad supported programming
Speaker 1: where viewers did not have to pay directly to watch things.
Speaker 1: Of course, his take on the potential of commercial driven
Speaker 1: television proved wildly incorrect. There were radio remote controls of
Speaker 1: various types going back to the nineteen twenties before the
Speaker 1: rise of television, and they had evolved and improved significantly
Speaker 1: over just a couple of decades, so it seemed like
Speaker 1: there had to be a way to control a TV
Speaker 1: with the remote too. There had already been an attempt
Speaker 1: to control a TV remotely, but it was not really
Speaker 1: all that helpful. That product was the Telezoom, which came
Speaker 1: out in nineteen forty eight, and as that name suggests,
Speaker 1: it let viewers zoom in on the picture. That was
Speaker 1: the only thing that it did. I often zoom in
Speaker 1: on pictures on my phone. I can see times you
Speaker 1: might want to do that on TV. Not that many times.
Speaker 1: It did not really take off. Yeah, it's tricky. I
Speaker 1: have seen some explanations that suggest that the idea for
Speaker 1: it was that TV's were so small at the time
Speaker 1: that people would want to zoom in. But I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 1: but it's a moving picture, so like what you zoom
Speaker 1: in on, yeah, may not be germane to the story.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a moving picture. And the image quality
Speaker 1: was also limited enough that it seems like zooming in
Speaker 1: would quickly just be like blobs. Yeah, I could see why.
Speaker 1: It was not a rousing success. But the first invention
Speaker 1: that came out of the Zenith Engineering group to solve
Speaker 1: this problem of being able to silence commercials with something
Speaker 1: called a lazy Bones, which I love. This was a
Speaker 1: very simple remote. It was intended really just to silence
Speaker 1: the TV during commercials, and Zenith advertised it that way,
Speaker 1: hoping that it would help to hamper the use of
Speaker 1: commercials and kind of kneecap commercial television. After all, if
Speaker 1: consumers didn't hear the ad messaging, what was the point.
Speaker 1: The Lazybones advertising encouraged viewers quote television fans have fun.
Speaker 1: Sit back in your chair, relax, keep Zeni's new Lazybone
Speaker 1: remote control handy to change stations, Press lightly with your
Speaker 1: thumb and presto, there's the program you want. But the
Speaker 1: Lazy Bones was not a wireless device. It had a
Speaker 1: cable that users had to connect to their television and
Speaker 1: it could turn the set on or off, or change
Speaker 1: the channels, and it also was really good at tripping people.
Speaker 1: Eugene McDonald really thought they could do better. Additionally, almost
Speaker 1: as soon as the Lazy Bones hit the market, other
Speaker 1: electronics companies started to make their own versions. So McDonald
Speaker 1: really wanted something that could outperform all of those imitators.
Speaker 1: And this is where Eugene Polly's inventive mind came up
Speaker 1: with a solution. We don't talk about that solution after
Speaker 1: we pause for a sponsor break. In nineteen fifty five,
Speaker 1: Eugene Polly developed a product that became the flash Mattic.
Speaker 1: The flash Matic used a beam of light to point
Speaker 1: at sensors in the corners of the television to change
Speaker 1: channels or activate the TV's power. It looked like a
Speaker 1: ray gun or even the kind of gun you might
Speaker 1: use to control a garden hose in terms of its form,
Speaker 1: and that form factor was not an accident. Polly later
Speaker 1: said in an interview that he chose that design quote
Speaker 1: so people could shoot out the commercial. Polly's invention also
Speaker 1: came equipped with what would become one of the most
Speaker 1: important features of all remote control devices going forward, a
Speaker 1: mute function. The flash Mattic was patented in Eugene Polly's
Speaker 1: name under the title control system. The patent application notes
Speaker 1: that it's trying to solve the danger issue of a
Speaker 1: tethered remote quote. In the past, many different remote control
Speaker 1: arrangements have been proposed for both radio and television receivers,
Speaker 1: some of which have been exploited commercially. Most of these
Speaker 1: remote control systems require physical interconnection between a remote control
Speaker 1: station and the receiver, usually by a conductive wire or
Speaker 1: multiconductor cable. Although some of these systems have been relatively
Speaker 1: convenient and effective in operation, they are always subject to
Speaker 1: the principal disadvantage that the wire or cable linking the
Speaker 1: remote control station to the rec receiver is not particularly
Speaker 1: attractive in appearance and may often cause accidents when laid
Speaker 1: across a portion of the floor where people must walk,
Speaker 1: which seems like would be most setups right most of
Speaker 1: the time, the space between where you sit and your
Speaker 1: television is where you walk to sit and watch television. Well.
Speaker 1: Another technology that was also working this way around this
Speaker 1: time was hearing aids that were connected physically to the
Speaker 1: television that also or a tripping hazard. I did not
Speaker 1: personally see these, but like one generation back from me
Speaker 1: and my family were like my great grandparents with their
Speaker 1: hearing aids that connected directly to the TV. Yeah, if
Speaker 1: you had two of these things going on, I shudder
Speaker 1: to think at the danger level you were dealing with.
Speaker 1: And I say that in case that sounded funny with
Speaker 1: entire sincerity, because yeah, I would trip over everything. Early
Speaker 1: ads for the flash mat touted its revolutionary nature. One
Speaker 1: such full page newspaper ad had the headline, now, a
Speaker 1: flash of light without wires controls your Zenith TV from
Speaker 1: across the room shoots off long, annoying commercials while picture
Speaker 1: remains on screen. The rest of the ads copy explained
Speaker 1: the device in more detail for consumers because this was
Speaker 1: entirely new technology. Quote, Flashmatic tuning is built into the set.
Speaker 1: It's a Zenith development. No other set has anything like it.
Speaker 1: There are no wires, chords or connections of any kind.
Speaker 1: You simply point the light from the flashmatic gun into
Speaker 1: one of the four flashmatic windows. There's one window in
Speaker 1: each corner of the picture frame. The flashmatic light turns
Speaker 1: the set on or off, changes stations forward or backward,
Speaker 1: shuts off annoying commercials. It's unbelievably simple to operate, harmless
Speaker 1: to humans, and built to last a lifetime. Many of
Speaker 1: the ads showed a beam of light that was going
Speaker 1: from the remote all the way to the TV to
Speaker 1: show consumers exactly what it was, and the accompanying copy
Speaker 1: often called it quote a flash of magic light. The
Speaker 1: price point noted in the ad we just read from
Speaker 1: was somewhat staggering. For a twenty one inch Zenith Bismarck
Speaker 1: model television that included this new technology, that was four
Speaker 1: hundred and nine dollars and ninety five cents, which would
Speaker 1: be roughly like five thousand dollars today, so clearly the
Speaker 1: flash Mattic was considered a luxury item. Other similar ads
Speaker 1: leaned into the convenience of this new invention, noting quote,
Speaker 1: you can turn the set on and off from your chair.
Speaker 1: One explained quote flashmatic is not an accessory or attachment.
Speaker 1: Sensitive photo cells and Zenith's famous fully automatic Bullseye tuning
Speaker 1: circuits combined to make this television work like magic. Despite
Speaker 1: that high cost, which retailers addressed by letting people buy
Speaker 1: new TVs on installment plans. Almost thirty thousand TVs equipped
Speaker 1: with flash Mattos were sold. Eugene Polly got a one
Speaker 1: thousand dollars bonus for the success of this new product. But,
Speaker 1: as is often the case with a brand new technology,
Speaker 1: the user experience in the real world revealed some problems
Speaker 1: that just were not immediately apparent when this product was
Speaker 1: tested in a lab. For one, there was just a
Speaker 1: basic issue of user memory. You had to remember which
Speaker 1: corner of the TV you had to shoot at for
Speaker 1: any given function, and that was not particularly intuitive, so
Speaker 1: people got kind of frustrated. But the bigger issue was
Speaker 1: that having a technology that is triggered by light in
Speaker 1: people's homes where there are a lot of potential light sources,
Speaker 1: led to a lot of problems. If a household had
Speaker 1: a particularly bright lamp in a room, turning it on
Speaker 1: might change the or volume settings, or turn the set
Speaker 1: on or off. Similarly, in cases where a home's windows
Speaker 1: weren't covered by curtains or shutters, the intense light of
Speaker 1: sunrise or sunset could also cause the TV to act
Speaker 1: as though it had received a user input. So owners
Speaker 1: of flashmatic sets had to carefully plan where their television
Speaker 1: set would be placed in the home without any light
Speaker 1: sources or mirrors that could reflect them in positions where
Speaker 1: they might impact the television. Rooms also had to be
Speaker 1: fairly dim for the flash Matic to work consistently, as
Speaker 1: ambient light made it harder for the receptors in the
Speaker 1: screen to detect the light beam from the remote pointed
Speaker 1: at them. Seeing that this idea could be further refined,
Speaker 1: McDonald asked for another team to come up with something different.
Speaker 1: In addition to the need to create a device that
Speaker 1: would eliminate the light sensitivity issues of the flash Maatic,
Speaker 1: the company wanted whatever new device came about to not
Speaker 1: require batter because apparently some users had panicked when the
Speaker 1: batteries and their Flashmatic failed and they thought their entire
Speaker 1: very expensive television set was broken, and that caused some
Speaker 1: woes for the company. Yeah. I never found specifics, but
Speaker 1: I envision like a company switchboard, just getting constant calls
Speaker 1: of I spent so much money on this and now
Speaker 1: it's broken, and them going, no, you need to replace
Speaker 1: batteries sometimes because batteries being used and everything was also
Speaker 1: not that common yet. So the year after Polly's invention
Speaker 1: was finished, there was a second remote control developed at
Speaker 1: Zenith This one, called a space Command, was the result
Speaker 1: of a project led by researcher Robert Adler. Adler and
Speaker 1: Polly are often characterized when this story is told because
Speaker 1: of their differences so where Polly was from a poor
Speaker 1: US family and had to leave college before he completed
Speaker 1: his advanced degree to get a job. Adler, who was
Speaker 1: born on December fourth, nineteen thirteen in Vienna, got his
Speaker 1: PhD in physics from the University of Vienna in nineteen
Speaker 1: thirty seven. After that he moved to the US and
Speaker 1: then in nineteen forty one he was hired to work
Speaker 1: at Zenith. In the years right after he joined the company,
Speaker 1: a lot of Adler's focus was in military applications. World
Speaker 1: War Two led to a lot of innovations, and Adler
Speaker 1: worked on projects like electro mechanical filters and high frequency
Speaker 1: oscillators that were used for radios in US military aircraft.
Speaker 1: Like a lot of engineers, he worked on loan from
Speaker 1: Zenith to the US military. Meanwhile, Eugene Polly was also
Speaker 1: working on the war effort. His concentration was in bomb
Speaker 1: fuses and radar technologies, and once the war was over, Adler,
Speaker 1: like Polly, continued on at Zenith working in television technology,
Speaker 1: and for Adler, a lot of his work focused on
Speaker 1: improving reception in picture and in a lot of cases
Speaker 1: Adler implemented and drew from concepts that he had just
Speaker 1: finished working on in his military radio work. There's one
Speaker 1: newspaper reference that states that Adler was the person who
Speaker 1: actually led the creation of the Lazybones tethered remote, but
Speaker 1: it doesn't seem as though that's accurate. In the twenty
Speaker 1: fifteen book Remote Control by Caitlin Benson Allett, the author
Speaker 1: states that no one at Zenith seemed to know who
Speaker 1: precisely came up with the Lazy Bones. According to some
Speaker 1: write ups about early remote control history, Eugene McDonald went
Speaker 1: directly to Adler to come up with something that solved
Speaker 1: the problems of the flash mattic. That's another one that's unclear.
Speaker 1: But Adler's team developed the Space Command and the design
Speaker 1: of it was very different from Polly's remote. The Space
Speaker 1: Command relied on high frequency chimes. The first model contained
Speaker 1: two lightweight aluminum rods within the unit. A year user
Speaker 1: pressed one of the buttons, the corresponding rod was struck
Speaker 1: and the resulting ultrasonic noise would send a sound wave
Speaker 1: that a microphone and receiver in the television picked up.
Speaker 1: Depending on which wave that was, the channel was changed
Speaker 1: or the sound was turned off. After the first model,
Speaker 1: a four rod version was made, which could turn channels
Speaker 1: up or down, turn sound on or off, or switch
Speaker 1: the power on or off. If you're old enough to
Speaker 1: have heard a remote control called a clicker that comes
Speaker 1: from the clicking of the buttons on the space command,
Speaker 1: although the sound that carried the signal was not generally
Speaker 1: perceptible to human ears. Before the idea for aluminum rods,
Speaker 1: one of the technologies that Adler had considered was the
Speaker 1: use of radio waves, a natural thought given how much
Speaker 1: of his prior work had been done in that field,
Speaker 1: But he had quickly realized that because radio waves could
Speaker 1: travel through objects, there isn't a way to ensure that
Speaker 1: your remote control was not going to change your neighbor's
Speaker 1: TV channel or the volume of the sound. Yeah, the
Speaker 1: sound waves got dampened by the walls of the house,
Speaker 1: but not so sort of like people's neighbors baby monitors
Speaker 1: picking up on one another. Yeah, same problem. And unlike
Speaker 1: the gun design of the flash Mattic, the Space Command
Speaker 1: was a small rectangular box with switches that were labeled
Speaker 1: for their function. Adler's team had solved all of the
Speaker 1: problems of the earlier model and without the need for
Speaker 1: batteries as requested, and this device worked consistently. There are
Speaker 1: some stories of these sound based remotes being affected by
Speaker 1: sounds in the home, like keys or pet tags jingling,
Speaker 1: or even coins clicking together, but there are also accounts
Speaker 1: that attribute those problems not to the Space Command but
Speaker 1: to knockoffs of it that started appearing on the market.
Speaker 1: Adler's remote went to market so soon after the Flash
Speaker 1: Mattic that one of the incentives that was offered to
Speaker 1: consumers was the chance to trade in your flash Madic
Speaker 1: enabled TV for a new Space Command model. Zenith also
Speaker 1: offered the Space Command technology on a wider range of
Speaker 1: TV sets, so consumers could still get a remote control
Speaker 1: if their budget did not allow for a full sized picture.
Speaker 1: ADS touted quote no electricity, no batteries or fuel of
Speaker 1: any kind, no wires, no tubes, no transistors, no radio
Speaker 1: waves that might interfere with the set next door. Some
Speaker 1: even included the note no flashlights. Nineteen fifty seven. Ad
Speaker 1: even featured George Burns and Gracie Allen as celebrity spokespeople
Speaker 1: for the space Command. Yeah. Just to be clear too,
Speaker 1: that trade in was not like a freeb You would
Speaker 1: just get a lot of credit torture new television if
Speaker 1: you had just bought a flash matic Delewis. Zenith was
Speaker 1: not giving away new TVs. But coming up, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about how Eugene Polly felt about things when
Speaker 1: Adler's invention was produced. But first we will hear from
Speaker 1: the sponsors that keep stuff you missed in history class going.
Speaker 1: Zenith put all of its advertising power behind Adler's design,
Speaker 1: and as a consequence, Adler got a lot of attention
Speaker 1: as the father of the remote control and that was
Speaker 1: something that bothered Eugene Polly from the beginning. He had
Speaker 1: pioneered the remote control space in a lot of ways,
Speaker 1: but he felt left out of the story as he
Speaker 1: watched Adler give interviews and get awards. Adler was given
Speaker 1: the Outstanding Technical Achievement Award of the Institute of Radio
Speaker 1: Engineers in nineteen fifty eight because of it. Polly later
Speaker 1: told a reporter quote, a father has to be present
Speaker 1: at conception, and if you're not, you're not the father.
Speaker 1: Even in the existing Zenith web page that still exists today,
Speaker 1: in the list of the company's milestones, it lists the
Speaker 1: two devices this way nineteen fifty five, first wireless TV
Speaker 1: remote control, flash Matic nineteen fifty six, first practical wireless
Speaker 1: TV remote control, Space Command. In the twenty five years
Speaker 1: that followed the Space Command's introduction, Zenith Solder reported nine
Speaker 1: million of the ultrasonic remote controls. During that time, Zenith
Speaker 1: had to fend off a lot of imitators. Just two
Speaker 1: years after the Space Command's introduction, Zenith sued the Admiral
Speaker 1: Corporation for patent infringement. Admiral was not new to the
Speaker 1: remote control game, but after the Space Command was released,
Speaker 1: the company altered its sn R remote and even hired
Speaker 1: a former Zenith engineer to work on it. Admiral lost
Speaker 1: that suit, but it was not the only company that
Speaker 1: tried to copy the design. A lot of those copycats, though,
Speaker 1: were not nearly as effective, and Zenith continued to dominate
Speaker 1: the market. Within six years of the introduction of the
Speaker 1: Space Command, Robert Adler had become the vice president and
Speaker 1: director of Research at Zenith, and he stayed in that
Speaker 1: role for more than fifteen years before retiring in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy nine. But even after retirement, he remained involved with Zenith,
Speaker 1: and he served as a consultant for the company until
Speaker 1: the late nineteen nineties. Polly retired from Zenith in nineteen
Speaker 1: eighty two, after almost fifty years with the company. Some
Speaker 1: accounts listed nineteen eighty two as the year both he
Speaker 1: and Adler retired. By the time he ended his career,
Speaker 1: Eugene Polly was a widower, having lost his wife Blanche
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy six. He lived with his daughter Joan
Speaker 1: in Lombard, Illinois, until Jones's death in two thousand and eight.
Speaker 1: Ultrasonic technology was what everyone was doing for for twenty
Speaker 1: five years, but it didn't remain the standard for remote controls.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen eighties, around the same time that Polly
Speaker 1: and Adler were retiring, a Canadian company called view Star
Speaker 1: developed the infrared remote control. Zenith partnered with Ustar to
Speaker 1: produce and market the device, and this was in part
Speaker 1: a reaction to other technological developments. When there was only
Speaker 1: a small range of channels a person could watch, a
Speaker 1: simple up and down channel changer was great, but as
Speaker 1: cable and satellite television services expanded the channel lineup from
Speaker 1: like thirteen into dozens and even hundreds of possible options.
Speaker 1: A new remote technology was clearly needed, and this was
Speaker 1: a significant jump in requirements. They needed more detailed input,
Speaker 1: like a numeric keypad so viewers could just type in
Speaker 1: channel numbers rather than scrolling through hundreds of them. Also
Speaker 1: the capability to select different potential av inputs like cable boxes,
Speaker 1: LaserDisc players, that kind of thing. I remember when I
Speaker 1: was a kid and we had a VCR and an ATARI.
Speaker 1: We had a physical little switch that we flipped back
Speaker 1: and forth to do this. Infrared fit the bill of
Speaker 1: providing all of those different options. It enabled remotes to
Speaker 1: use pulse coding, that's binary. Each coded transmission has segments
Speaker 1: of light and absence of light that make up its signature,
Speaker 1: and each signature is unique to the assigned function. That
Speaker 1: light is pointed at the receiver, just like that the
Speaker 1: human eye does not perceive. So the remotes we use
Speaker 1: today are actually closer to Polly's flash mattic than to
Speaker 1: Adler's space command. In nineteen ninety seven, the National Academy
Speaker 1: of Television, Arts and Sciences gave an Emmy for pioneering
Speaker 1: development of wireless remote controls for consumer television, and both
Speaker 1: Polly and Adler jointly received that recognition of them Orton's
Speaker 1: of the remote control's invention. In two thousand, are write
Speaker 1: up in The Baltimore Sun celebrated fifty years of the
Speaker 1: remote control, and in that article, Polly told the paper quote,
Speaker 1: it makes me think maybe my life wasn't wasted. Maybe
Speaker 1: I did something for humanity, like the guy who invented
Speaker 1: the flush toilet. Although Polly stated in his interview for
Speaker 1: the article that he and Adler were feuding, Zenith's historian
Speaker 1: John Taylor downplayed any conflict, stating quote, I think the
Speaker 1: feud is way overblown. One invention lasted one year, the
Speaker 1: other twenty five years. The industry generally considers Bob Adler
Speaker 1: the father of the remote control. Remember the name John Taylor,
Speaker 1: because he's going to come up again in just a bit.
Speaker 1: In a two thousand and four interview, Adler commented on
Speaker 1: his impact in the creation of modern television culture. He
Speaker 1: stated quote, people ask me all the time, don't you
Speaker 1: feel guilty for it? And I say that's ridiculous. It
Speaker 1: seems reasonable and rational to control the TV from where
Speaker 1: you normally sit and watch television. Robert Adler died on
Speaker 1: February fifteenth, two thousand and seven, and before he died,
Speaker 1: he said that he felt that Polly had not gotten
Speaker 1: enough credit for his innovations in the remote control. He
Speaker 1: noted in a two thousand and six interview quote, I
Speaker 1: don't believe it has a single father, but the general
Speaker 1: public wants one name to attach to something. Adler also
Speaker 1: downplayed the importance of the invention overall, saying he that's
Speaker 1: Adler had invented other things that he thought were more important. Additionally,
Speaker 1: according to a quote his widow, Ingrid Adler, gave to
Speaker 1: the press in the wake of his death, Adler was
Speaker 1: not much of a TV watcher himself. She told reporters quote,
Speaker 1: he was more of a reader. He was a man
Speaker 1: who would dream in the night and wake up and
Speaker 1: say I just solved a problem. He was always thinking science.
Speaker 1: While Polly had always wanted more recognition for inventing one
Speaker 1: of the earliest remote controls, Adler is said to have
Speaker 1: always wanted less. He felt that he invented a lot
Speaker 1: of other things that were more important, and he continued
Speaker 1: to invent right up until his death. The last patent
Speaker 1: application he filed was for a touch screen technology, and
Speaker 1: that patent was pending when he died. He had really
Speaker 1: been a prolific inventor. Adler had more than one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty patents to his name. Yeah, the exact number
Speaker 1: eluded me. I saw some articles that said like one
Speaker 1: hundred and twenty, others one hundred and eighty. And then
Speaker 1: when you go looking, there are so many Robert Adlers
Speaker 1: that do that have patents, and sometimes they get lumped
Speaker 1: together as though they're one person. That I was like,
Speaker 1: I don't have time to sort through this, so, but
Speaker 1: it was a lot. Although Adler did not think the
Speaker 1: remote control was all that important, Eugene Polyscher did. He
Speaker 1: told a reporter when he was interviewed following Adler's death, quote,
Speaker 1: this this is the greatest thing since the wheel. We
Speaker 1: did something for humanity. Polly also had quite a few patents,
Speaker 1: although not nearly as many as Adler. Polly had eighteen.
Speaker 1: One of those was for a push button radio that
Speaker 1: was used in cars. Eugene Polly lived several years after
Speaker 1: Adler's death, and Polly died from pneumonia in twenty twelve
Speaker 1: in Downersgrove, Illinois. After his death, the Los Angeles Times
Speaker 1: ran an article about him and included quotes from Zenith
Speaker 1: historian John Taylor, who had different messaging than he did
Speaker 1: when speaking to The Baltimore Sun twelve years earlier. This
Speaker 1: time he acknowledged Polly's importance while also kind of straddling
Speaker 1: the line regarding the issue of attribution that Polly had
Speaker 1: felt left out of for so many years. This time,
Speaker 1: Taylor stated, quote, it's hard to even fathom the world
Speaker 1: today without the remote control. Today it's not a luxury,
Speaker 1: it's not a convenience, it's an assse. I think there's
Speaker 1: no question that Gene Polly is the father of the
Speaker 1: wireless remote control. There are some news reports that made
Speaker 1: it seem like he was overshadowed by doctor Robert Adler.
Speaker 1: Zenith has always considered them the co inventors. And another statement,
Speaker 1: Taylor noted that Eugene always carried one of his splash
Speaker 1: maattics around with him to show people, and that he
Speaker 1: also loved new technology, saying quote, he was a proud
Speaker 1: owner of a flat screen TV and a modern remote. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The messaging kind of changed there from one Lass in
Speaker 1: one year one twenty five. Robert Edler is a father too.
Speaker 1: We always thought both of them were really the fathers.
Speaker 1: It's fine. As for Zenith, in the autumn of nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety five, LG Electronics Incorporated became the major shareholder of Zenith.
Speaker 1: The Zenith brand had a refresh in nineteen ninety seven,
Speaker 1: but then restructured completely in nineteen ninety nine, and by
Speaker 1: the end of that year it became a fully owned
Speaker 1: subsidies of LG. In two thousand, Motorola acquired Zenus Network
Speaker 1: Systems Division in an effort to quote strengthen its digital
Speaker 1: satellite business by expanding its product lines and customer base,
Speaker 1: particularly in the international marketplace. Today Zenith exists, but it
Speaker 1: is LG's research and development branch, operating out of a
Speaker 1: laboratory building in Lincolnshire, Illinois. It's now essentially impossible to
Speaker 1: buy a new television that works without a remote control.
Speaker 1: More than forty million televisions are sold in the US annually,
Speaker 1: with that number expected to reach fifty million by twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three, and all of them ship with remotes. Plus
Speaker 1: remotes are also sold separately for replacements or specialty uses
Speaker 1: such as universal remotes. This is a far cry from
Speaker 1: the thirty thousand units of the flash Mattic that's sold
Speaker 1: in the nineteen fifties. Yeah. Now, I can't imagine buying
Speaker 1: a TV at not having remote in the box. Yeah,
Speaker 1: mine our TV, I don't think you can. Yeah, Like,
Speaker 1: our TV technically has buttons, but they're so built in
Speaker 1: to the like you can't even tell where they are.
Speaker 1: You have to know and fish around for them if
Speaker 1: you want to touch a button for some reason. Well,
Speaker 1: and a lot of them have migrated to like the
Speaker 1: under edge of the screen or even in some cases
Speaker 1: right behind it. Yeah. So they're basically like, don't touch
Speaker 1: the buttons. You don't know what you do? No, Yeah,
Speaker 1: just don't mess with it. Don't mess with it. We
Speaker 1: can whax so rhapsodic about this on Friday. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: have a listener mail which is about an episode that
Speaker 1: you did, but it is referring to behind the scenes
Speaker 1: things that I said. This is from our listener Kyle,
Speaker 1: who writes, perhaps you'll get a lot of emails about this,
Speaker 1: and hopefully most, if not all, of them are not angry.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to throw out there that when I
Speaker 1: wanted to get a vasectomy. The doctor wanted to know
Speaker 1: my wife was involved in the decision too. The way
Speaker 1: I took it is that if you're married, usually should
Speaker 1: be making this decision together and not secretly doing it
Speaker 1: without your spouse's knowledge. Though I can't think of instances
Speaker 1: where this is not the case, but I took it
Speaker 1: as them wanting to confirm that I'm not making a
Speaker 1: decision that will affect the whole family without at least
Speaker 1: my wife's knowledge. However, that being said, it does seem
Speaker 1: much more culturally acceptable for men to make this decision
Speaker 1: than women, and I'm sure there is often a but
Speaker 1: why don't you want to be a mother? Undertow and
Speaker 1: that men don't get so Hopefully the doctors you spoke
Speaker 1: to mainly wanted to confirm that this was something agreed
Speaker 1: to by both spouses and not something hidden, though again
Speaker 1: I know men and women are treated differently in these areas,
Speaker 1: to the women's detriment. I love the podcast and listen
Speaker 1: all the time. Kyle Kyle. I love this email, and
Speaker 1: here's why, because you are right on the button. There
Speaker 1: is a lot of I have a thing, and admittedly
Speaker 1: this is my soapbox. I don't want to make anybody
Speaker 1: mad or feel like I am in any way denigrating
Speaker 1: anybody's choices. But there is a thing that happens when
Speaker 1: you are not a woman who wants kids, where you
Speaker 1: have to explain why all the time. And I will
Speaker 1: say this, and again I'm not saying this. This isn't
Speaker 1: a trick to like make anybody feel bad. But when
Speaker 1: you ask a parent, why did you want kids, they're
Speaker 1: often a little stymied as to the answer. Uh huh.
Speaker 1: And but nobody ever asked that question is why? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's always the other way around. So simultaneously kind of
Speaker 1: alluded to in this email, if somebody is trying to
Speaker 1: get a tubul ligation and they have not had a
Speaker 1: child and they're very young, it can be a laborious,
Speaker 1: uphill process to get any doctor to agree with that.
Speaker 1: That was me, Yeah, that was you. And like for
Speaker 1: people who are not in a relationship with anyone will
Speaker 1: go to a doctor and the like the question is not,
Speaker 1: you know, I would like to get a tubule ligation. Great,
Speaker 1: when we can we schedule this? Like do you have
Speaker 1: medical contraindications for doing this of any sort? It's that like, oh,
Speaker 1: are you sure you're not going to change your mind? Oh,
Speaker 1: are you sure you're not going to want kids later? Oh?
Speaker 1: What if you get married and your husband wants kids.
Speaker 1: It is a huge uphill battle specifically for tubal ligations
Speaker 1: in a way that does not apply to vasectomies, Like
Speaker 1: if a young person wants to go get a vasectomy,
Speaker 1: a lot of times it's like, okay, we're on board
Speaker 1: with that, And so there's a gender difference going on there.
Speaker 1: For sure, I did not have to personally deal with
Speaker 1: this because when I wanted a long term birth control option,
Speaker 1: I went with an IUD, and my primary care doctor
Speaker 1: referred me to a gynecologist who only did gynecology, not
Speaker 1: gynecology and obstetrics, right, And her focus was totally on
Speaker 1: like the gynecological aspect of it, And there was no
Speaker 1: kind of like supposition that my partner needed to be involved.
Speaker 1: And since it is more reversible to have an IUD
Speaker 1: than to have a tubeligation, like that was just not
Speaker 1: part of the conversation. Yeah, And I will say when
Speaker 1: I had the like discussions, it wasn't is your husband
Speaker 1: okay with this? It was we need to schedule your
Speaker 1: husband to come in and talk to us like it
Speaker 1: wasn't enough for me to go Yeah, he's totally on board. Listen,
Speaker 1: we're both the youngest in the family. We barely can
Speaker 1: tie our own shoes, like we do not need to
Speaker 1: be in charge of other people. It was literally like
Speaker 1: he needs to physically be here and have the discussion right,
Speaker 1: which Brian found hilarious because it is very silly. I
Speaker 1: will say too, this is like an overshare. But the
Speaker 1: tube legation I got was a different method than I
Speaker 1: think is super common. This may have changed in the
Speaker 1: this was quite a number of years ago, but I
Speaker 1: will tell you why. I don't know how common it
Speaker 1: is still because I have clamps. It's not the tie
Speaker 1: off of the tubes. It's a clamp that closes the
Speaker 1: tube up. And then the idea is that if you
Speaker 1: change your mind within like a few years, they could
Speaker 1: potentially reverse it, but if you don't, it will just
Speaker 1: scar over and become more and more permanent. Sounds fine
Speaker 1: to me, and I know when I had it it
Speaker 1: was not common at all because my doctor at the
Speaker 1: time was kind of pioneering in that usage. But the
Speaker 1: reason I think it is still not all that common
Speaker 1: is that when I have had X rays, MRI, et cetera.
Speaker 1: In recent years, they'll go, there's something in your abdomen
Speaker 1: and I'm like, yep, it's clamps. I mean they're little tiny,
Speaker 1: it's like a little tiny plastic, almost like the way
Speaker 1: a handcuff works, but like Barbie size. It has come
Speaker 1: up several times, and I'm like, if it's uncommon enough
Speaker 1: that the modern radiology texts, doctors in some cases that
Speaker 1: I'm talking to are like, hey, what's that in your
Speaker 1: apt Yeah, I'm presuming it's not still the most common way,
Speaker 1: but right, it's a weird thing. It's a weird thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I also, you know, listen, there is the other outlier
Speaker 1: case that I think is important in all of this
Speaker 1: to mention, where there are people who may be in
Speaker 1: relationships where they feel very trapped and potentially unsafe and
Speaker 1: they do not want a child. Yeah, and in that
Speaker 1: case to bring a spouse in could be very very dangerous,
Speaker 1: extremely Yeah. And that's why I think, like, I don't
Speaker 1: want to talk around that and not directly say this
Speaker 1: is a case issue where like doctors need to understand
Speaker 1: and it's tricky because a lot of women are not
Speaker 1: going to be. I mean, a lot of people would
Speaker 1: not be willing to say, hey, my partner is abusive
Speaker 1: or dangerous and I'm so scared I want to have
Speaker 1: this done. But if they don't say that and then
Speaker 1: that person comes in, you're putting them in incredibly harmful circumstances. Right,
Speaker 1: So this is one of the many ways that I
Speaker 1: think people aren't thinking about why that conversation is a problem. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but Kyle, thank you for your your thoughtful thing, and
Speaker 1: you're right. People don't don't do the same thing with dudes.
Speaker 1: I even had two of the doctors that I talked
Speaker 1: to you before I found the doctor who became my
Speaker 1: regular doctor, who was like, okay, if and she asked,
Speaker 1: is you know is your husband on board? She asked
Speaker 1: me questions like is your household safe? Are you doing
Speaker 1: this for a reason? Like I was like, okay, she
Speaker 1: gets it. Yeah, I think do you feel safe at home?
Speaker 1: Has become a standard screening question in a lot of
Speaker 1: medical practices. That is something that my doctor asks me
Speaker 1: every time I'm there. Yeah, but was definitely not always
Speaker 1: the case. Is twenty two thousand, what year did I
Speaker 1: have that done? I don't know. Here's two thousand was
Speaker 1: not as common then, so that was like I said,
Speaker 1: she's a little cutting edge in many ways. But the
Speaker 1: other two even said, well then why isn't your husband
Speaker 1: considering of a sectomy? Like my value would go down
Speaker 1: if I wasn't able to make babies. Yeah, it's a
Speaker 1: very fraught topic. It's very hard to talk about because
Speaker 1: everybody that chooses a different path will sometimes feel like
Speaker 1: their choice is being attacked. I just know what's right
Speaker 1: for me. I'm not used for anybody else, right, everybody'd
Speaker 1: be cool. If you would like to write to us,
Speaker 1: you could do so at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com.
Speaker 1: If you haven't subscribed to the podcast, where you'll get
Speaker 1: history and surprise discussions of you know, sterilization and parenting choices,
Speaker 1: you can do that on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere
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Speaker 1: History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
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