© 2024
NPR News, Colorado Stories
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

The Father Of The Couch Potato, Inventor Of Wireless Remote Dies At Age 96

This 1955 photo illustration provided by LG Electronics, shows an ad for a Zenith "Flash-Matic," the first wireless TV remote control.
AP
This 1955 photo illustration provided by LG Electronics, shows an ad for a Zenith "Flash-Matic," the first wireless TV remote control.

Before you sink into your couch, before you flip through channels tonight when you get home, take a minute to think about the guy who made being a couch potato possible:

Back in 1955, Eugene J. Polley invented the "Flash-Matic," or the world's first wireless TV remote control. Back then, you held it like a gun and it acted like a flashlight using visible light to trigger photo cells on the TV to change channels.

This undated photo provided by LG Electronics shows engineer Eugene Polley.
/ AP
/
AP
This undated photo provided by LG Electronics shows engineer Eugene Polley.

Polley, whose engineering career with Zenith spanned 47 years, died on Sunday. He was 96.

According to a press release from Zenith, Polley held 19 U.S. patents and also worked on the push-button radio and an early version of today's DVD.

But his biggest contribution to mankind was of course the remote. As Gizmodo points out, his invention not only made "channel surfing" a "thing," it also changed the way TV was made.

"After an NBC research term discovered that 25% of their audience changed channels as soon as the credits started rolling, the NBC 2000 unit (responsible for primetime branding of the network) invented the 'squeeze-and-tease,' the split screen credits that roll alongside the last few minutes of a program," Gizmodo writes. "Commercials were moved from their between-program slot to right in the middle of a show, to avoid losing viewers to the lag time of an advertisement transition."

Polley started his career at Zenith, which is now part of LG Electronics, working at a stock room. He eventually moved up to the engineering department where he spent most of his career. Born in Chicago, Polley is survived by his son and grandson.

Update at 6:34 p.m. ET. NPR David Schaper has filed an obituary for All Things Considered.

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Eyder Peralta
Eyder Peralta is NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya.
Related Content
  • Former President Ronald Reagan would surely be pleased to know that many of his legacies remain vital in 2012, from campaign pledges to lower taxes to ketchup's classification as a vegetable. Reagan is also responsible for a lesser-known contribution to American food culture: National Frozen Food Day.
  • This year marks the 50th anniversary of when Johnny Carson took over The Tonight Show. For 30 years, Carson reached a nightly audience 15 million people, but he was also intensely private. Guy Raz talks with Peter Jones, director of a documentary looking at the Carson's public and personal lives.
  • NBA supernova Jeremy Lin reportedly slept on one before the Knicks' winning streak. And Steve Jobs obsessed over finding the perfect specimen for his living room. During many periods of our lives, the sofa is at the epicenter. It is home base, North Star, study carrel, dining booth and royal throne rolled into one.
  • The 2012 presidential election is more than a year away, but that's not keeping political advertisers from targeting the TV airwaves. However, a survey has found that the TV audience is shrinking — especially the young voters.