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February 15: Remote Control
lawrencebush
February 15, 2011
The inventor of the wireless television remote control, Robert Adler, died on this date in 2007. His innovation was to use ultra-sound rather than a light beam to activate the television; by the time this was supplanted in the 1980s by infra-red technology, nine million of Adler’s “Zenith Space Command” remote controls had been sold. Alder received his education in Austria before fleeing the Nazis in 1937. Also a pioneer of touch-screen technology, he held 180 patents at the time of his death in Boise, Idaho at the age of 94.
“Nothing between you and the set but space!”
—Ad for the Zenith Space Command
