If the motorcycle industry ever collected items to be shot into space so that they might later hopefully found by martians–a la the Voyager record–an audio file of the snarling crackle from a Kawasaki H2 750 with expansion chambers would undoubtedly be included in the cask. He was working on a project bike up until he passed at 84. Frankly, Bill probably didn’t care how they did it in California. However, he was from Illinois so, of course, no dubious gold jacket fame or AMA Hall of Fame nod. If Bill had been from anywhere in California he’d have been widely celebrated as an innovator and pioneer in motorcycle racing. And," he added, "frankly, I couldn't care less."Ĭopyright 2005 William S.Editor’s note: looks like Bill Wirges passed away in 2019, after I purchased a bike from him. What did the inventor of the television remote control think of how his little device evolved? In 1999 he said, "the thing has so many buttons, I don't know what most of them are for. But, of course, human nature won out and by 1985 more televisions were sold with a remote than without. It took a while for this couch potatoness to take hold because Adler's remote added nearly 30%, to the price of a TV. He built into the TV set a special electronic circuit that could hear these sounds and react.Īdler's remote control, called the Space Command, but nicknamed the "clicker", was first marketed in 1956 - the year when we officially entered the couch potato age. These were of just the right size so that when lightly tapped, each emitted a high-frequency sound unheard by humans. He placed inside his remote control four lightweight aluminum rods. So he used "ultrasonics." That is, high-frequency sounds that are beyond human hearing.Īdler built a kind of silent "chime" that called out signals to the TV set. To find the right invisible signal, they turned to Robert Adler.Īdler was an expert in combining sound with electronics - a field called, not very cleverly, acusto-optical electronics.Īdler didn't want to use sound that could be heard by humans, he thought it would annoy users to hear a beep every time they changed a channel, plus some household noise, or a sound from the television itself, might trigger the channel to change. But radio signals travel through walls and so could control a TV set in a nearby room. Zenith engineers liked the idea of a remote control and so tried to improve on this design by using radio waves. But it had to be used in a darkened room, because sunlight made the tuner rotate continuously. These light signals could turn the television on and off and also rotate the channel selector knob. It evolved from a remote called the "flashmatic." This controller flashed light at special photocells installed in the television set. He invented the remote control, called, in that age of Sputnik and rocketry, the "Zenith Space Command." It wasn't the earliest television remote control, but it was the first successful one. We have officially been in the couch potato age for almost fifty years. Your browser does not support the audio element. Remote Control JA public radio commentary
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