In September, 1898, at Madison Square Garden, Nikola Tesla revealed a new invention: a radio-controlled torpedo boat. It was the first demonstration of wireless remote control in history, and it caused, in Tesla’s words, “a sensation such as no other invention of mine has ever produced.” Some witnesses believed that the Croatian inventor was using mind control.
Detailed in his patent, No. 613,809, a “Method of and Apparatus for Controlling Mechanism of Moving Vessels or Vehicles,” Tesla demonstrated how radio signals can remotely trigger switches and direct a vehicle’s movement without “intermediate wires, cables, or other form of electrical or mechanical connection with the object save the natural media in space.” While Tesla recognized a wide list of applications for his remote-controlled robots, including transporting objects to distant locations and establishing communication with and exploring “inaccessible regions,” he presciently, albeit optimistically, zeroed in on the military potential of his invention. “The greatest value,” he wrote in his patent application, will be its use in armaments and warfare, “for by reason of its certain and unlimited destructiveness it will tend to bring about and maintain permanent peace among nations.”
Less than two decades later, during the First World War, the Germans employed a remote-controlled motorboat packed with explosives and attached to an unspooling wire. Radio-controlled and limited-range tanks, bombers, and guided missiles were deployed by the Russians, Germans, and Americans during the Second World War, with their use expanding as the war progressed. Drawing on the advances made by the military, commercial electronics companies began experimenting with more anodyne applications, ushering in the age when remote control became a handy device intended to make life easier for consumers. In 1939, Philco Radio came out with the Mystery Control, a wireless radio remote equipped with a low-frequency, battery-operated transmitter and a telephone-like dial. Zenith ventured into television controls with the 1950 release of the Lazy Bones remote, marketed with the tagline “Take It Easy” and the promise of “complete automatic program selection in the palm of your hand.” But the device was not fully remote, since it relied on a wire connected to the set, and users complained about tripping over it.
In 1955, Zenith introduced the first true wireless television remote, the Flashmatic. Invented by Eugene Polley, it was able to turn the television on or off, change channels, and mute the sound by flashing a directional light on photoelectric cells at each corner of the screen. “You can even shut off annoying commercials while the picture remains,” Zenith advertised. Shaped like a pistol and launched in an era when Westerns were omnipresent, Polley’s idea was for TV viewers to “shoot out” the ads. While Zenith assured the public that the remote was “absolutely harmless to humans,” it did have one problem: on bright days, the sunlight sometimes changed the channels.
A year later, in 1956, Zenith came out with another remote control, this one invented by Robert Adler. Called the Space Command, it relied on ultrasonic sound waves that keyed a sensor embedded in the TV. The noisy byproduct of pressing its buttons led to another nickname, “the clicker.” Adler’s sonic trigger had drawbacks, too, as users could activate the TV with jingling keys or rattling coins. But Zenith determined this flaw to be less troublesome than those of Polley’s controller, and the high-frequency remote soon replaced the Flashmatic.
The one-two punch of the Chicago-born Polley and the Vienna-born Adler initiated a half-century of discord over who was the real father of the TV remote. Polley often complained that Adler stole the limelight. “Not only did I not get credit for doing anything,” Polley told the Chicago Tribune in 2006, “I got a kick in the rear end.” He also received a thousand-dollar bonus from Zenith for his invention, and in 1997 Adler and Polley shared a special Emmy Award for their contributions to television.
In 1980, a Canadian company, Viewstar, developed the first TV remote to use infrared technology, a low-frequency light beam invisible to the human eye and capable of operating various electronic products. This approach, which allowed more, and more complicated, commands, soon became standard, especially as cable companies expanded their channel offerings well beyond the limits of a TV dial. In 1987, the Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak helped invent the first universal programmable remote, called the Controller of Remote Equipment, or CORE. A single patented device for controlling multiple home electronics, such as TVs, VCRs and stereos, it sold poorly, and the company collapsed a year later.
While remote controls capable of commanding many different devices have become the norm in living rooms, a growing number of electronics companies now see the smartphone as the path to a truly universal remote control. No longer just for home entertainment, the smartphone-as-remote can use apps, with their infinite variety of interfaces, to control a limitless number of devices: to turn up the A.C. or turn on the heat, flip a light switch, lower the window shades, start a car, trigger a home-security camera, and, of course, change the TV channel. And thanks to home Wi-Fi routers and cloud servers, smartphones and tablets are no longer dependent on direct, processor-heavy connections to send these signals.
This past August, one member of the Z-Wave Alliance, an association of about two hundred and fifty so-called “home-control” manufacturers and service providers, climbed nearly twenty-seven thousand feet to the peak of Cho Oyu, in the Himalayas. With the push of a few buttons, he used his smartphone to adjust the thermostat, flip the lights, and unlock and lock the doors of his New Jersey home. The exhibition would have made Nikola Tesla proud. The Z-Wave system relies on technology in homes that does not interfere with the signals of other wireless devices, like Bluetooth: low-power radio waves.
Steven Beschloss is the author of “The Gunman and His Mother: Lee Harvey Oswald, Marguerite Oswald, and the Making of an Assassin.”
Photograph by Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty.
