Maybe the greatest American hero of all time dies. Meet Eugene Polley, who invented the TV remote control back in 1955. He died of natural causes on Sunday, at age 96. Here’s to you, Eugene. All men salute you, and especially those of us who like to watch two NFL games at the same time.
This post was last modified on July 21, 2021
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It is a form of exercise getting up to change channels and let's hope the 'pc' police don't ban our beloved remotes. :-)
And the greatest accessory of all, the MUTE button!
Too bad that doesn't work on the wife.
Yeah, but the MUTE button still doesn't work on the wife.
Damn you oddballz, you beat me to it!
I tried turning up the brightness on my TV, but it was still pretty stupid.
The remote is a double edged sword when the wife gets it.
When I was a kid my parents had a voice activated remote. All one of them had to do was give a voice command like "put it on Gunsmoke" Kids usually sat close to the TV back then.
'course with only five channels it was easier duty.
5? We only had 3½ (1 we could only get at night)
Yeah, we had the big 3. And my PARENTS controlled what we watched. I didn't see the Beatles for weeks because my Dad watched Bonanza on another network at the same time as The Ed Sullivan Show. I fell in love with the music long before I saw their faces in pictures or on TV! LOL
Wow, you guys were deprived!
I grew up in the NYC broadcast area, so we had 7 channels!
CBS 2, NBC 4, WNYW 5, ABC 7, WOR 9, WPIX 11, and PBS 13.
There were a couple of UHF channels that could be picked up if the weather was right, but they were usually Spanish language.
That aside, we didn't get a color TV until Christmas 1969, and I never had a remote control TV until I bought my own.
Growing up in S.E. Alaska (on an island!), we had 5 channels-ABC, NBC, CBS, and 2 Canadian channels out of Prince Rupert, B.C. It seemed like every Sunday was fried chicken dinner and Walt Disney.
Bet you didn't have Carol Doda in a tight sweater saying "the perfect 36" for UHF channel 36. Great stuff for a 13-14 year old teenage boy.
No, can't say I did have Carol Doda, but then I didn't live in California, so it was unlikely I could have seen her.
Apparantly I am from Great Britain, according to Olivia and her massively intelligent research crew! ;-)
UK? Ha, that one I would have read had I caught it.
Ghost, start reading here:
https://www.ihatethemedia.com/catholic-archdioceses-of-ny-wash-dc-sue-obama-admin-for-violation-of-1st-amendment-rights/comment-page-1#comment-185079
It's only 7 short posts.
I didn't have a clue, it's 3:30 AM so I did an image search, now that's funny.
So did you ever manage to watch the ensuing program? Or were you always in the bathroom?
LOL i was trying to explain to my kids about the "clicker" a while back.. and how, sadly, for a time my brother and I were the clickers
Amen! With a remote control, your wife is free to make sandwiches and pour the beer, instead of having to run up and click through the dial alla time.