A father of home automation "beams up"

["Robert Green" <ROBERT_GREEN1963@xxxxxxxxx>]

Robert Adler, co-inventor of the remote control and a prolific inventor,
died Thursday at the age of 93.  Along with inventor and fellow engineer
Eugene Polley, Adler helped bring the first commercially successful wireless
TV remote -- the Zenith Space Command -- to market in 1956.

Adler and Polley's refinement was ingeniously simple. When a viewer pressed
the buttons on the Space Command, tiny hammers struck lightweight aluminum
rods to produce high-frequency sounds . . .

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/16/AR2007021602
102.html

The article also talks about a precursor from Zenith called "Lazy Bones"
which performed on/off and channel-changing functions via a cord attached to
the set, which apparently soon proved to be a safety hazard.  While I
distinctly recall the two-button Zenith ultrasonic "Space Command" I confess
I don't recall the Lazy Bones.   It's pretty hard to even *imagine* a TV
remote having only two buttons in this day an age, but that's all there was
on the Zenith.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_control

and

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e3/Zenith_SpaceCommand.jpg


--
Bobby G.