The inventor of the TV remote control has died. Eugene Polley died of natural causes at age 96. RIP. Click below to read more.
A moment of silence please for a visionary inventor who did more for TV sports viewing than anybody else. Eugene Polley, inventor of the TV remote control, died Sunday at age 96 of natural causes.
Where would sports fans worldwide be without the ability to flip back and forth between games at the flick of button?
Yes kids, back in the old days of the 20th century, people actually had to get up off the couch, walk to their TV, and turn a dial to select the channel they wanted to watch. I remember functioning as my father’s personal remote control as a kid, jumping up to change channels on our old Zenith.
Polley changed TV forever by inventing the “Flash-Matic,” the first wireless TV remote, in 1955. The device (see photo) looked like a ray gun. It’s given way to the sleeker, high-tech devices we use today.
Los Angles Times columnist Mark Lazarus puts Polley’s TV clicker alongside personal computers and microwaves as an invention that changed how Americans live.
Gush all you want about Facebook, Twitter and other recent tech innovations. I’d stack Polley and his TV remote against all of them. After all, which would you be more willing to give up — Facebook or your remote? Thought so.
