Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class TV Remotes About this episode The initial time period where a TV remote control was developed was pretty short. And it shows how two different people perceive their work, and how that work is perceived differently over time by their employer.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:04 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argentix. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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1:39 Holly Frey? We've all tumbled down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose, and it leaves us more anxious than informed. Our feeds are full of wellness trends, but how do we know what's real, what's exaggerated, and what's just wrong? Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association breaks it all down. Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends, not to cancel them, but to understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. So listen to Health vs. Hype wherever you get your podcasts.
2:12 Holly Frey? Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.
2:23 Holly Frey? Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Homi Fry.
2:25 Tracy V. Wilson? And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
2:28 Holly Frey? Uh, this is another one of those episodes that was intended to be an assortment, a collection of things. And then it became about just one of those things.
2:38 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
2:39 Holly Frey? I was planning to write about three or maybe four very mundane things that we use every day in our lives and their origins. But then, when I got to the story of the TV remote control, I discovered there was a drama. Uh, in some ways, it's a one-sided drama, but we'll talk about it. This is, uh, one that's really relatable, I think, probably for anyone that has worked for a big company and has felt like their contributions are lauded one moment and forgotten the next. I think a lot of us can relate to that. But it is also a story about how two very different people perceive their work in the same space.
3:18 Holly Frey? And how in some cases, that work is perceived differently over time by those around them and even their employer.
3:27 Holly Frey? The initial time period where a TV remote control was being developed was actually pretty short. We've recently talked about spray paint and how that had multiple options of people that get credited as the person that are over literal decades. But this is like, within 18 months, two people emerged, each of whom sometimes are called the father of the remote control. And one of those versions that they created quickly supplanted the other. So we're going to talk about those very early years and the way that two inventors who were pivotal to the story have been talked about in different ways by the company that they both worked for.
4:06 Tracy V. Wilson? So we're starting a little earlier than that, which is that in 1898, Nikola Tesla received a patent for a remote control device. His patent called this "method of and apparatus for controlling mechanism of moving vessels or vehicles." This invention was for, quote, "controlling from a distance the operation of the propelling engines, the steering apparatus, and other mechanism carried by moving bodies or floating vessels, of which the following is a specification, reference being had to the drawings accompanying and forming part of the same."
4:43 Tracy V. Wilson? That remote is not specifically germane to the technology that we're talking about today, but it's illustrative of the ways that people were thinking about using remote controls well before televisions were even invented. We talked about TV's invention in our 2013 episode on Philo T. Farnsworth.
5:05 Holly Frey? So, jumping ahead from that moment, more than 100 years, a 2006 write-up about Eugene Polly in the Atlantic City newspaper, The Press, reads, quote, "50 years ago, Polly invented the wireless remote. In return, he got $1,000 and a lifetime of gnawing irritation at being squeezed out of pop culture history. Now, he's trying to set the record straight." And in that article, Polly told the paper, quote, "Not only did I not get credit for doing anything, I got a kick in the rear." So, I stumbled upon this and said, "What is the backstory here?"
5:43 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, it suggests that there was drama.
5:46 Holly Frey? Mm-hmm.
5:48 Tracy V. Wilson? Eugene Theodore Polly was born on November 29, 1915, in Chicago. His mother, Vera Wachowski, was from a wealthy family, but his father was a bootlegger. When Eugene was born, Vera's family had cut off most contact with her because of her connection to Eugene's father, but his father did not stay around either. The two of them were separated when Eugene was still really young. This is often described as his father abandoning Vera and Eugene. His father's first name is really never mentioned in any accounts of Eugene's life, and later, Eugene started using his confirmation name of Joseph as his middle name.
6:32 Holly Frey? Yeah, I don't know if Theodore was perhaps tied to his father in any way. That's sheer speculation on my part, but there is definitely an unwillingness to include any of that kind of discussion in any stories of his life. Finances were very, very tight, but Vera and Eugene got by together. And Eugene was very clearly a super smart kid. He just had a mind for all things mechanical. And after high school, he attended City Colleges of Chicago. And then he went on to the Armour Institute to study engineering. The Armour Institute is the Illinois Institute of Technology today. But Polly wasn't able to finish his studies and he didn't get his engineering degree.
7:16 Holly Frey? The depression was making life harder and harder. And his mother just needed help keeping their life together financially. So Eugene joined the workforce.
7:25 Tracy V. Wilson? In 1935, 20-year-old Eugene got hired by Zenith Radio Corporation. And he started there as a parts clerk. He didn't stay in the stockroom, though. He was eventually able to move into the company's engineering department. And then he kept moving up from there. He became a product engineer and eventually moved into management in the mechanical engineering group.
7:49 Holly Frey? Zenith's founder, another Eugene, that's Eugene McDonald, started pushing his engineers to come up with something that would enable viewers to not have to endure commercials. This was in 1950. Apparently McDonald, who had the nickname "The Commander" by his employees, just hated commercials and he figured most other viewers did too. That's usually how this is reported. And it sounds like kind of a feel-good story about a captain of industry fighting for the interests of his consumers. But it's a little more complicated than that. McDonald thought that ad-supported television was not going to last. And moreover, he did not want it to last.
8:30 Holly Frey? And that was in part because Zenith was developing an early pay-per-view business model, which would have competed with ad-supported programming, where viewers did not have to pay directly to watch things. Of course, his take on the potential of commercial-driven television proved wildly incorrect.
8:49 Tracy V. Wilson? There were radio remote controls of various types going back to the 1920s before the rise of television, and they had evolved and improved significantly over just a couple of decades. So it seemed like there had to be a way to control a TV with a remote, too. There had already been an attempt to control a TV remotely, but it was not really all that helpful. That product was the Telezoom, which came out in 1948. And as that name suggests, it let viewers zoom in on the picture. That was the only thing that it did. I often
9:28 Tracy V. Wilson? zoom in on pictures on my phone. I concede times you might want to do that on TV. Not that many times it did not really take off.
9:37 Holly Frey? Yeah, it's tricky. I have seen some explanations that suggest that the idea for it was that TVs were so small at the time that people would want to zoom in. But I'm like, yeah, but it's a moving picture. So like what you zoom in on
9:51 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
9:51 Holly Frey? may not be germane to the story.
9:53 Tracy V. Wilson? It's a moving The moving picture and the image quality was also limited enough that it seems like zooming in would quickly just be like blobs.
10:03 Holly Frey? Yeah, I could see why it was not a rousing success. But the first invention that came out of the Zenith Engineering Group to solve this problem of being able to silence commercials was something called a Lazybones, which I love. This was a very simple remote. It was intended really just to silence the TV during commercials. And Zenith advertised it that way, hoping that it would help to hamper the use of commercials and kind of kneecap commercial television. After all, if consumers didn't hear the ad messaging, what was the point? The Lazybones advertising encouraged viewers, quote, "Television fans, have fun. Sit back in your chair. Relax. Keep Zenith's new Lazybone Remote Control
10:48 Holly Frey? handy. To change stations, press lightly with your thumb. And presto, there's the program you want." But the Lazybones was not a wireless device. It had a cable that users had to connect to their television, and it could turn the set on or off or change the channels. And it also was really good at tripping people. Eugene McDonnell really thought they could do better. Additionally, almost as soon as the lazy bones hit the market, other electronics companies started to make their own versions. So McDonald really wanted something that could outperform all of those imitators.
11:24 Tracy V. Wilson? And this is where Eugene Pauli's inventive mind came up with a solution. We will talk about that solution after we pause for a sponsor break.
11:37 Speaker 04 First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?
11:39 Tracy V. Wilson? Hey, everybody, it's Tracy from Stuff You Missed in History Class. That's Alan Goya, a planning engineer at AT&T. He's talking about Intuit Dome, home of the Los Angeles Clippers, where every seat, screen, phone, and transaction is connected with AT&T fiber and 5G, defining the fan's experience. And Alan's master plan made it all possible.
12:00 Speaker 04 It was going to rival anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.
12:07 Tracy V. Wilson? That includes field services manager Drexel Jones. His team made sure it all came together and held up on game day.
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12:20 Tracy V. Wilson? And after years of hard work and collaboration, it was opening night.
12:23 Speaker 05 To actually see the whole stadium light up and data is flowing is a beautiful thing.
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12:34 Speaker 06 Connecting changes everything. AT&T.
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13:44 Tracy V. Wilson? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jessa have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane, navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So, listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends
14:28 Tracy V. Wilson? proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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15:26 Speaker 07 reinvented, based on real feedback, is made with 100% white meat chicken and is now better than ever. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets and sauces today.
15:44 Holly Frey? In 1955, Eugene Polly developed a product that became the Flashmatic. The Flashmatic used a beam of light to point at sensors in the corners of the television to change channels or activate the TV's power. It looked like a ray gun, or even the kind of gun you might use to control a garden hose in terms of its form. And that form factor was not an accident. Polly later said in an interview that he chose that design, quote, "so people could shoot out the commercial." Polly's invention also came equipped with what would become one of the most important features of all remote control devices going forward: a mute function.
16:24 Tracy V. Wilson? The Flashmatic was patented in Eugene Polly's name, under the title "Control System." The patent application notes that it's trying to solve the danger issue of a tethered remote. Quote, "In the past, many different remote control arrangements have been proposed for both radio and television receivers, some of which have been exploited commercially. Most of these remote control systems require physical interconnection between a remote control station and the receiver, usually by a conductive wire or multi-conductor cable." Although some of these systems have been relatively convenient and effective in operation, they are always subject to the principal disadvantage that the wire or cable linking
17:09 Tracy V. Wilson? the remote control station to the receiver is not particularly attractive in appearance and may often cause accidents when laid across a portion of the floor where people must walk.
17:21 Holly Frey? Which seems like would be most setups, right? Most of the time, the space between where you sit and your television is where you walk to sit and watch television.
17:31 Tracy V. Wilson? Well, another technology that was also working this way around this time was hearing aids that were connected physically to the television that also were a tripping hazard. I did not personally see these, but like one generation back from me and my family were...
17:51 Tracy V. Wilson? Like my great grandparents with their hearing aids that connected directly to the TV.
17:56 Holly Frey? Yeah. If you had two of these things going on, I shudder to think at the danger level you were dealing with. And I say that in case that sounded funny with entire sincerity because
18:07 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
18:08 Holly Frey? I would trip over everything. Uh, early ads for the Flashmatic touted its revolutionary nature. One such full-page newspaper ad had the headline, "Now, a flash of light without wires controls your Zenith TV from across the room. Shoots off long annoying commercials while picture remains on screen." The rest of the ad's copy explained the device in more detail for consumers because this was entirely new technology. Quote, "Flashmatic tuning is built into the set. It's a Zenith development. No other set has anything like it. There are no wires, cords, or connections of any kind. You simply point the light from the Flashmatic gun into one of the four Flashmatic windows.
18:52 Holly Frey? There's one window in each corner of the picture frame. The Flashmatic light turns the set on or off, changes stations forward or backward, shuts off annoying commercials. It's unbelievably simple to operate, harmless to humans, and built to last a lifetime." Many of the ads showed a beam of light that was going from the remote all the way to the TV to show consumers exactly what it was. And the accompanying copy often called it, quote, "A flash of magic light."
19:24 Tracy V. Wilson? The price point noted in the ad we just read from was somewhat staggering. For a 21-inch Zenith Bismarck model television that included this new technology, that was $409.95, which would be roughly like $5,000 today. So clearly, the Flashmatic was considered a luxury item. Other similar ads leaned into the convenience of this new invention, noting, quote, "You can turn the set on and off from your chair." One explained, quote, "Flashmatic is not an accessory or attachment. Sensitive photo cells and Zenith's famous fully automatic bullseye tuning circuits combine
20:07 Tracy V. Wilson? to make this television work like magic."
20:11 Holly Frey? Despite that high cost, which retailers addressed by letting people buy new TVs on installment plans, almost 30,000 TVs equipped with FlashMatic's were sold. Eugene Polly got a $1,000 bonus for the success of this new product. But as is often the case with a brand-new technology, the user experience in the real world revealed some problems that just were not immediately apparent when this product was tested in a lab. For one, there was just a basic issue of user memory. You had to remember which corner of the TV you had to shoot at for any given function, and that was not particularly intuitive, so people got kind of frustrated.
20:56 Holly Frey? But the bigger issue was that having a technology that is triggered by light in people's homes, where there are a lot of potential light sources, led to a lot of problems. If a household had a particularly bright lamp in a room, turning it on might change the channel or volume settings, or turn the set on or off. Similarly, in cases where a home's windows weren't covered by curtains or shutters, the intense light of sunrise or sunset could also cause the TV to act as though it had received a user input. So owners of FlashMatic sets had to carefully plan where their television set would be placed in the home, without any light sources or mirrors that could reflect them in positions where they might impact the television.
21:41 Holly Frey? Rooms also had to be fairly dim for the FlashMatic to work consistently, as ambient light made it harder for the receptors in the screen to detect the light beam from the remote pointed at them.
21:53 Tracy V. Wilson? Seeing that this idea could be further refined, McDonald asked for another team to come up with something different. In addition to the need to create a device that would eliminate the light sensitivity issues of the FlashMatic, the company wanted whatever new device came about to not require batteries. Because apparently, some users had panicked when the batteries in their FlashMatic failed, and they thought their entire, very expensive television set was broken, and that caused some woes for the company.
22:28 Holly Frey? Yeah, I never found specifics, but I envisioned like a company switchboard just getting constant calls of, "I spent so much money on this and now it's broken." And then going, "No, you need to replace batteries sometimes." Because batteries being used in everything was also not that common yet. So, the year after Polly's invention was finished, there was a second remote control developed at Zenith. This one, called a Space Command, was the result of a project led by researcher Robert Adler. Adler and Polly are often characterized, when this story is told, because of their differences. So, where Polly was from a poor US family and had to leave college before he completed
23:11 Holly Frey? his advanced degree to get a job, Adler, who was born on December 4th, 1913, in Vienna, got his PhD in physics from the University of Vienna in 1937. After that, he moved to the US, and then in 1941, he was hired to work at Zenith.
23:29 Tracy V. Wilson? In the years, right after he joined the company, a lot of Adler's focus was in military applications. World War II led to a lot of innovations, and Adler worked on projects like electromechanical filters and high-frequency oscillators that were used for radios in US military aircraft. Like a lot of engineers, he worked on loan from Zenith to the US military. Meanwhile, Eugene Polly was also working on the war effort. His concentration was in bomb fuses and radar technologies.
24:03 Holly Frey? And once the war was over, Adler, like Polly, continued on at Zenith, working in television technology. And for Adler, a lot of his work focused on improving reception and picture. And in a lot of cases, Adler implemented and drew from concepts that he had just finished working on in his military radio work. There's one newspaper reference that states that Adler was the person who actually led the creation of the Lazy Bones tethered remote, but it doesn't seem as though that's accurate. In the 2015 book Remote Control by Caitlin Benson-Allott, the author states that no one at Zenith seemed to know who precisely came up with the Lazy Bones.
24:43 Tracy V. Wilson? According to some write-ups about early remote control history, Eugene McDonald went directly to Adler to come up with something that solved the problems of the Flashmatic. That's another one that's unclear, but Adler's team developed the Space Command, and the design of it was very different from Polly's remote. The Space Command relied on high-frequency chimes. The first model contained two lightweight aluminum rods within the unit, and when a user pressed one of the buttons, the corresponding rod was struck, and the resulting ultrasonic noise would send a sound wave that a microphone and receiver in the television picked up. Depending on which wave that was, the channel was changed
25:26 Tracy V. Wilson? or the sound was turned off. After the first model, a four-rod version was made, which could turn channels up or down, turn sound on or off, or switch the power on or off. If you're old enough to have heard a remote control called a clicker, that comes from the clicking of the buttons on the Space Command, although the sound that carried the signal was not generally perceptible to human ears. Before the idea for aluminum rods, one of the technologies that Adler had considered was the use of radio waves, a natural thought, given how much of his prior work had been done in that field. But
26:07 Tracy V. Wilson? he had quickly realized that because radio waves could travel through objects, there wasn't a way to ensure that your remote control was not going to change your neighbor's TV channel or the volume of the sound.
26:22 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, the sound waves got dampened by the walls of the house.
26:26 Holly Frey? Yeah.
26:27 Tracy V. Wilson? This is sort of like people's neighbors' baby monitors picking up on one another.
26:31 Holly Frey? Yeah, same problem. And unlike the gun design of the Flashmatic, the Space Command was a small rectangular box with switches that were labeled for their function. Adler's team had solved all of the problems of the earlier model and without the need for batteries, as requested. And this device worked consistently. There are some stories of these sound-based remotes being affected by sounds in the home, like keys or pet tags jingling, or even coins clicking together. But there are also accounts that attribute those problems not to the Space Command, but to knockoffs of it that started appearing on the market.
27:13 Tracy V. Wilson? Adler's remote went to market so soon after the Flashmatic that one of the incentives that was offered to consumers was the chance to trade in your Flashmatic-enabled TV for a new Space Command model. Zenith also offered the Space Command technology on a wider range of TV sets, so consumers could still get a remote control if their budget did not allow for a full-sized picture. Ads touted, quote, "No electricity, no batteries or fuel of any kind, no wires, no tubes, no transistors, no radio waves that might interfere with the set next door." Some even included the note "no flashlights."
27:54 Tracy V. Wilson? A 1957 ad even featured George Burns and Gracie Allen as celebrity spokespeople for the Space Command.
28:02 Holly Frey? Yeah, just to be clear, too, that trade-in was not like a freebie. You would just get a lot of credit towards your new television if you had just bought a Flashmatic television. Zenith was not giving away new TVs. But coming up, we're going to talk about how Eugene Polley felt about things when Adler's invention was produced. But first, we will hear from the sponsors that keep Stuff You Missed in History Class going.
28:30 Tracy V. Wilson? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with Vive Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jesay have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So, listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends
29:14 Tracy V. Wilson? proving that queer joy only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
29:29 Speaker 07 Okay, chicken nugget fans, I've got huge news. The new Burger King Chicken Nuggets just dropped, and they are the crispiest, the juiciest, and the tastiest chicken nuggets ever at Burger King. Burger King heard that a lot of you didn't like the old chicken nuggets, so they got to work and reinvented them. To go along with the new chicken nuggets, a lot of the sauces were reinvented too, because better chicken nuggets deserve better sauces. We're talking new buffalo sauce, honey mustard, sweet and sour, and even a whole new option too, the new special savory sauce, which is only available for a limited time at participating US restaurants. I mean, you need to taste it all for yourself.
30:12 Speaker 07 This new chicken nugget, reinvented based on real feedback, is made with 100% white meat chicken and is now better than ever. You gotta try the new Burger King Chicken Nuggets and sauces today.
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32:12 Tracy V. Wilson? Zenith put all of its advertising power behind Adler's design, and as a consequence, Adler got a lot of attention as the father of the remote control. And that was something that bothered Eugene Polly from the beginning. He had pioneered the remote control space in a lot of ways, but he felt left out of the story as he watched Adler give interviews and get awards. Adler was given the Outstanding Technical Achievement Award of the Institute of Radio Engineers in 1958 because of it. Polly later told a reporter, quote, "A father has to be present at conception, and if you're not, you're not the father." Even in the existing Zenith webpage that still exists today, in the list of the company's milestones,
32:57 Tracy V. Wilson? it lists the two devices this way: 1955, first wireless TV remote control Flashmatic. 1956, first practical wireless TV remote control Space Command. In the 25 years that followed the Space Command's introduction, Zenith sold a reported 9 million of the ultrasonic remote controls. During that time, Zenith had to fend off a lot of imitators. Just two years after the Space Command's introduction, Zenith sued the Admiral Corporation for patent infringement. Admiral was not new to the remote control game, but after the Space Command was released, the company altered its Sonar remote
33:43 Tracy V. Wilson? and even hired a former Zenith engineer to work on it. Admiral lost that suit, but it was not the only company that tried to copy the design. A lot of those copycats, though, were not nearly as effective, and Zenith continued to dominate the market.
33:59 Holly Frey? Within six years of the introduction of the Space Command, Robert Adler had become the Vice President and Director of Research at Zenith, and he stayed in that role for more than 15 years before retiring in 1979. But even after retirement, he remained involved with Zenith, and he served as a consultant for the company until the late 1990s.
34:20 Tracy V. Wilson? Paulie retired from Zenith in 1982, after almost 50 years with the company. Some accounts list 1982 as the year both he and Adler retired. By the time he ended his career, Eugene Paulie was a widower, having lost his wife Blanche in 1976. He lived with his daughter Joan in Lombard, Illinois, until Joan's death in 2008.
34:44 Holly Frey? Ultrasonic technology was what everyone was doing for 25 years, but it didn't remain the standard for remote controls. In the 1980s, around the same time that Poly and Adler were retiring, a Canadian company called Viewstar developed the infrared remote control. Zenith partnered with Viewstar to produce and market the device, and this was in part a reaction to other technological developments. When there was only a small range of channels a person could watch, a simple up and down channel changer was great. But as cable and satellite television services expanded the channel lineup from like 13 into dozens and even hundreds of possible options,
35:29 Holly Frey? a new remote technology was clearly needed.
35:33 Tracy V. Wilson? And this was a significant jump in requirements. They needed more detailed input, like a numeric keypad, so viewers could just type in channel numbers rather than scrolling through hundreds of them. Also, the capability to select different potential AV inputs, like cable boxes, LaserDisc players, that kind of thing. I remember when I was a kid and we had a VCR and an Atari, we had a physical little switch that we flipped back and forth to do this. Infrared fit the bill of providing all of those different options. It enabled remotes to use pulse coding that's binary. Each coded transmission has segments of light and absence of light
36:15 Tracy V. Wilson? that make up its signature, and each signature is unique to the assigned function. That light is pointed at the receiver, just like the human eye does not perceive. So the remotes we use today are actually closer to Poly's Flashmatic than to Adler's Space Command.
36:33 Holly Frey? In 1997, the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences gave an Emmy for pioneering development of wireless remote controls for consumer television. And both Polly and Adler jointly received that recognition of the importance of the remote controls invention.
36:50 Tracy V. Wilson? In 2000, a write-up in the Baltimore Sun celebrated 50 years of the remote control. And in that article, Polly told the paper, quote, "It makes me think maybe my life wasn't wasted. Maybe I did something for humanity like the guy who invented the flush toilet." Although Polly stated in his interview for the article that he and Adler were feuding, Zenith historian John Taylor downplayed any conflict, stating, quote, "I think the feud is way overblown. One invention lasted one year, the other 25 years. The industry generally considers Bob Adler the father of the remote control." Remember the name John Taylor because he's going to come up again in just a bit.
37:32 Holly Frey? In a 2004 interview, Adler commented on his impact in the creation of modern television culture. He stated, quote, "People ask me all the time, 'Don't you feel guilty for it?'" And I say that's ridiculous. It seems reasonable and rational to control the TV from where you normally sit and watch television.
37:53 Tracy V. Wilson? Robert Adler died on February 15, 2007. And before he died, he said that he felt that Polly had not gotten enough credit for his innovations in the remote control. He noted in a 2006 interview, quote, "I don't believe it has a single father, but the general public wants one name to attach to something." Adler also downplayed the importance of the invention overall, saying he, that's Adler, had invented other things that he thought were more important. Additionally, according to a quote his widow Ingrid Adler gave to the press in the wake of his death, Adler was not much of a TV watcher himself. She told reporters, quote, "He was more of a reader.
38:37 Tracy V. Wilson? He was a man who would dream in the night and wake up and say, 'I just solved a problem.' He was always thinking science." While Polly had always wanted more recognition for inventing one of the earliest remote controls, Adler is said to have always wanted less. He felt that he invented a lot of other things that were more important, and he continued to invent right up until his death. The last patent application he filed was for a touchscreen technology, and that patent was pending when he died. He had really been a prolific inventor. Adler had more than 150 patents to his name.
39:17 Holly Frey? Yeah, the exact number eluded me. I saw some articles that said like 120, others 180, and then when you go looking, there are so many Robert Adler's that have patents, and sometimes they get lumped together as though they're one person that I was like, I don't have time to sort through this. But it was a lot. Although Adler did not think the remote control was all that important, Eugene Polly sure did. He told a reporter when he was interviewed following Adler's death, quote, "This is the greatest thing since the wheel. We did something for humanity." Polly also had quite a few patents, although not nearly as many as Adler. Polly had 18. One of those was for a push-button radio
40:02 Holly Frey? that was used in cars.
40:04 Tracy V. Wilson? Eugene Polly lived several years after Adler's death, and Polly died from pneumonia in 2012 in Downers Grove, Illinois. After his death, The Los Angeles Times ran an article about him and included quotes from Zenith historian John Taylor, who had different messaging than he did when speaking to The Baltimore Sun 12 years earlier. This time, he acknowledged Polly's importance while also kind of straddling the line regarding the issue of attribution that Polly had felt left out of for so many years. This time, Taylor stated, quote, "It's hard to even fathom the world today without the remote control. Today, it's not a luxury, it's not a convenience, it's a necessity." I think
40:49 Tracy V. Wilson? there's no question that Gene Polly is the father of the wireless remote control. There are some news reports that made it seem like he was overshadowed by Dr. Robert Adler. Zenith has always considered them the co-inventors.
41:03 Tracy V. Wilson? In another statement, Taylor noted that Eugene always carried one of his flash matics around with him to show people and that he also loved new technology, saying, quote, "He was a proud owner of a flat screen TV and a modern remote."
41:16 Holly Frey? Yeah, the messaging kind of changed there from "one lasted one year, 125, Robert Adler is a father" to "we always thought both of them were really the fathers." It's fine. As for Zenith, in the autumn of 1995, LG Electronics Incorporated became the major shareholder of Zenith. The Zenith brand had a refresh in 1997, but then restructured completely in 1999. And by the end of that year, it became a fully owned subsidiary of LG. In 2000, Motorola acquired Zenith's Network Systems Division in an effort to, quote, "strengthen its digital satellite business by expanding its product lines and customer
42:00 Holly Frey? base, particularly in the international marketplace." Today, Zenith exists, but it is LG's research and development branch, operating out of a laboratory building in Lincolnshire, Illinois.
42:13 Tracy V. Wilson? It's now essentially impossible to buy a new television that works without a remote control. More than 40 million televisions are sold in the US annually, with that number expected to reach 50 million by 2023, and all of them ship with remotes. Plus, remotes are also sold separately for replacements or specialty uses, such as universal remotes. This is a far cry from the 30,000 units of the flash matic that sold in the 1950s.
42:44 Holly Frey? Yeah, now I can't imagine buying a TV and not having a remote in a box.
42:49 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, my, our TV.
42:50 Holly Frey? I don't think you can.
42:51 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, our, like, our TV technically has buttons, but they're so built in to the, like, you can't even tell where they are. You have to know and fish around for them if you want to touch a button for some reason.
43:06 Holly Frey? Well, and a lot of them have migrated to, like, the under edge of the screen, or even in some cases, right behind it.
43:12 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
43:13 Holly Frey? So they're basically like, "Don't touch the buttons. You don't know what you're doing."
43:16 Tracy V. Wilson? No, yeah, just don't mess with it. Don't mess with it.
43:19 Holly Frey? We can wax so rhapsodic about this on Friday.
43:21 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
43:23 Holly Frey? I have a listener mail, which is about an episode that you did, but it is referring to behind the scenes things that I said. This is from our listener Kyle, who writes, "Perhaps you'll get a lot of emails about this and hopefully most, if not all of them are not angry. I just wanted to throw out there that when I wanted to get a vasectomy, the doctor wanted to know my wife was involved in the decision too. The way I took it is that if you're married, you usually should be making this decision together and not secretly doing it without your spouse's knowledge, though I can think of instances where this is not the case. But I took it as them wanting to confirm that I'm not making a decision that will affect the whole family without at least my wife's knowledge. However, that being said, it does seem much more culturally acceptable for men to make
44:06 Holly Frey? this decision than women, and I'm sure there is often a, but why don't you want to be a mother, undertone that men don't get. So hopefully the doctors you spoke to mainly wanted to confirm that this was something agreed to by both spouses and not something hidden. Though again, I know men and women are treated differently in these areas to the women's detriment. I love the podcast and listen all the time, Kyle." Kyle, I love this email and here's why, because you are right on the button. There is a lot of, I have a thing, and admittedly, this is my soapbox. I don't want to make anybody mad or feel like I am in any way denigrating anybody's choices. But there is a thing that happens when you are not a woman who wants kids, where you
44:51 Holly Frey? have to explain why all the time. And I will say this, and again, I'm not saying this, this isn't a trick to like make anybody feel bad, but when you ask a parent, "Why did you want kids?", they're often a little stymied as to the answer.
45:05 Tracy V. Wilson? Uh huh.
45:06 Holly Frey? And so, but nobody ever asks that question is why.
45:11 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
45:12 Holly Frey? It's always the other way around.
45:13 Tracy V. Wilson? So simultaneously, kind of alluded to in this email, um, if somebody is trying to get a tubal ligation and they have not had a child and they're very young. It can be a laborious uphill process to get any doctor to agree with that.
45:32 Holly Frey? That was me.
45:33 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, that was you. Um, and like for people who are not in a relationship with anyone will go to a doctor and the doc, like the, the question is not, you know, I would like to get a tubal ligation. Great. When we, can we schedule this? Like, do you have medical contraindications for doing this of any sort? It's that like, oh, are you sure you're not going to change your mind? Oh, are you sure you're not going to want kids later? Oh, what if you get married and your husband wants kids? It is a huge uphill battle specifically for tubal ligations in a way that does not apply to vasectomies. Like if a young person wants to go get a vasectomy, a lot of times it's like, okay, we're on board with that.
46:14 Tracy V. Wilson? And so there's a gender difference going on there for sure. I did not have to personally deal with this, uh, because, uh, when I wanted a long-term birth control option, I went with an IUD. And my primary care doctor referred me to a gynecologist who only did gynecology, not gynecology and obstetrics.
46:38 Holly Frey? Right.
46:40 Tracy V. Wilson? And her focus was totally on like the gynecological aspect of it. And there was no kind of like supposition that my partner needed to be involved. Uh, and since it is more reversible to have an IUD than to have a tubal ligation, like that was just not part of the conversation.
47:00 Holly Frey? Yeah. And I will say, when I had the like
47:06 Holly Frey? discussions, it wasn't, is your husband okay with this? It was, we need to schedule your husband to come in and talk to us.
47:13 Tracy V. Wilson? Mm hmm.
47:13 Holly Frey? Like, it wasn't enough for me to go, yeah, he's totally on board. Listen, we're both the youngest in the family. We barely can tie our own shoes. Like, we do not need to be in charge of other people. Um, it was literally like, he, he needs to physically be here and have the discussion.
47:27 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
47:28 Holly Frey? Which Brian found hilarious, um, because it is very silly.
47:34 Holly Frey? I will say too, this is like an overshare, but the tubal ligation I got.
47:42 Holly Frey? Was a different method than I think is super common. This may have changed in the interim. This was quite a number of years ago, but I will tell you why I don't know how common it is still. Because I have clamps. It's not the tie off of the tubes. It's a clamp that closes the tube up. And then the idea is that if you change your mind within like a few years, they could potentially reverse it. But if you don't, it will just scar over and become more and more permanent.
48:14 Holly Frey? Which sounds fine to me. And I know when I had it, it was not common at all because my doctor at the time was kind of pioneering in that usage. But I, the reason I think it is still not all that common is that when I have had x-rays, MRI, et cetera, in recent years, they'll go, there's something in your abdomen. And I'm like, yep, it's clamps.
48:38 Holly Frey? I mean, they're little tiny. It's like a little tiny plastic.
48:41 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
48:41 Holly Frey? Almost like the way a handcuff works, but like Barbie size. It has come up several times and I'm like, if it's uncommon enough that the modern radiology techs, doctors in some cases that I'm talking to are like, hey, what's that in your abdomen?
48:58 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
48:58 Holly Frey? I'm presuming it's not still the most common way, but
49:02 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
49:03 Holly Frey? It's a weird thing. It's a weird thing.
49:05 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
49:06 Holly Frey? Yeah. I also, you know, listen, there is the other outlier case that I think is important in all of this to mention where there are people who may be in relationships where they feel very trapped and potentially unsafe and they do not want a child.
49:28 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
49:29 Holly Frey? And in that case, to bring a spouse in could be very, very dangerous.
49:34 Tracy V. Wilson? Extremely, yeah.
49:36 Holly Frey? And that's why I think like, I don't want to talk around that and not directly say, this is a case issue where like, Doctors need to understand, and it's tricky because a lot of women are not going to be, I mean, a lot of people would not be willing to say, hey, my partner is abusive or dangerous, and I'm so scared I want to have this done. But if they don't say that, and then that person comes in, you're putting them in incredibly harmful circumstances.
50:04 Tracy V. Wilson? Right, right.
50:05 Holly Frey? So this is one of the many ways that I think people aren't thinking about why that conversation is a problem.
50:10 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
50:12 Holly Frey? But Kyle, thank you for your thoughtful thing. And you're right, people don't, don't do the same thing with dudes.
50:20 Holly Frey? I even had two of the doctors that I talked to before I found the doctor who became my regular doctor, who was like, okay, if, and she asked, is, you know, is your husband on board? She asked me questions like, is your household safe? Are you doing this for a reason? Like, I was like, okay, she gets it.
50:36 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, I think, do you feel safe at home has become a standard screening question in a lot of medical practices. It is something that my doctor asks me every time I'm there.
50:46 Holly Frey? Yeah, but was definitely not always the case in 202000. What year did I have that done? I don't know. I think it was 2000.
50:56 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah.
50:57 Holly Frey? Was not as common then. So that was, like, she was, she was a little cutting edge in many ways. But the other two even said, well, then why isn't your husband considering a vasectomy? Like, my, my value would go down if I wasn't able to make babies.
51:15 Holly Frey? Yeah, it's a very fraught topic. It's very hard to talk about because everybody that chooses a different path will sometimes feel like their choice is being attacked. I just know what's right for me. I'm not choosing for anybody else.
51:29 Tracy V. Wilson? Right.
51:30 Holly Frey? Everybody be cool. If you would like to write to us, you could do so at [email protected] . If you haven't subscribed to the podcast, where you'll get history and surprise discussions of, you know, sterilization and parenting choices, you can do that on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.
51:57 Tracy V. Wilson? Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
52:11 Holly Frey? A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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