Eugene Polley Dies at 96; Inventor of The TV Remote Control
Eugene Polley, inventor of the TV remote control, died Sunday at age 96 in a hospital in Downers Grove, Illinois. He was an accomplished inventor that worked for Zenith Electronics from 1935 to 1982. He changed the lives of hundreds of millions around the world with the creation of the first wireless TV remote in 1955. The world would be a different place without our beloved clicker! Eugene Polley holds his Flash-Matic television remote control in the image below. He said that his remote was The greatest thing since the wheel.
Polley long felt he was denied proper credit for the remote control, said his son, Eugene Polley Jr. The remote he invented used a beam of light directed at sensors in the corners of the set to change channels or turn the picture and sound on and off. A year later, another Zenith researcher, Robert Adler, a Viennese-born physicist, developed the Space Command remote. The Space Command relied on a series of high-frequency chimes that keyed a sensor to change channels. Both devices had drawbacks, but Adler’s design was embraced by Zenith. Today’s infrared signal remotes, however, have more in common with Polley’s device, Taylor said.
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