May 23, 2012, 1:30 pmInventor of Wireless Remote Dies: Clunky Technology Lives On By DAVID CARRLG Electronics, via Associated PressAn ad for Zenith’s Flash-Matic. It can seem as if we haven’t come very far.When I read Margalit Fox’s gorgeous obituary of Eugene Polley, the creator of the wireless television remote, I was struck by the vision he displayed when he invented the so-called Flash-Matic back in 1955. I was also struck by the fact that more than half a century later, the technology he invented, which managed to be convenient and clunky at the same time, has yet to be really improved upon. The troubles in the system — which worked with TV sets built with a photo cell in each corner of the screen ... Continue reading →
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May 23, 2012, 1:30 pmInventor of Wireless Remote Dies: Clunky Technology Lives On By DAVID CARRLG Electronics, via Associated PressAn ad for Zenith’s Flash-Matic. It can seem as if we haven’t come very far.When I read Margalit Fox’s gorgeous obituary of Eugene Polley, the creator of the wireless television remote, I was struck by the vision he displayed when he invented the so-called Flash-Matic back in 1955. I was also struck by the fact that more than half a century later, the technology he invented, which managed to be convenient and clunky at the same time, has yet to be really improved upon. The troubles in the system — which worked with TV sets built with a photo cell in each corner of the screen ... Continue reading →
May 23, 2012, 1:30 pmInventor of Wireless Remote Dies: Clunky Technology Lives On By DAVID CARRLG Electronics, via Associated PressAn ad for Zenith’s Flash-Matic. It can seem as if we haven’t come very far.When I read Margalit Fox’s gorgeous obituary of Eugene Polley, the creator of the wireless television remote, I was struck by the vision he displayed when he invented the so-called Flash-Matic back in 1955. I was also struck by the fact that more than half a century later, the technology he invented, which managed to be convenient and clunky at the same time, has yet to be really improved upon. The troubles in the system — which worked with TV sets built with a photo cell in each corner of the screen ... Continue reading →
“As he and I have said all these years, you can’t make everybody happy,” Mr. Politziner said. “If you try to make everybody happy, you make nobody happy.” Mr. Berman, now Judge Berman of Superior Court in Middlesex County, N.J., faced the most public — and possibly most difficult — decision of his career on Monday, as he sentenced Dharun Ravi for using a webcam to spy on his roommate at Rutgers having sex with a man. “I have disenchanted both sides,” Judge Berman said, after prosecutors and the defense both vowed to appeal — one side upset that the judge gave Mr. Ravi a jail sentence of just 30 days, the other trying to absolve him. “It is what it is.” The sentence only ... Continue reading →
His death was announced by the Zenith Electronics Corporation, where Mr. Polley began his career in the stockroom before rising through the engineering ranks to invent the device, called the Flash-Matic, in 1955. “Just think!,” an advertisement breathlessly proclaimed that year. “Without budging from your easy chair you can turn your new Zenith Flash-Matic set on, off, or change channels. You can even shut off annoying commercials while the picture remains on the screen.” The Flash-Matic remote, which worked like a flashlight, was shaped like a snub-nosed revolver. The shape was a considered choice on Mr. Polley’s part, as he explained in 2000, letting viewers in the age of ubiquitous TV westerns “shoot out” commercials. Flash-Matic made the TV audience less captive, though also less ... Continue reading →
May 23, 2012, 8:27 amThe Breakfast Meeting: Google Gets Defensive, and Remote Control Inventor Dies By NOAM COHEN“American Idol” on Wednesday night will crown a new winner — its 11th — marking the end of a season that has added a little tarnish to the jewel of network television. The program’s still-huge viewer totals are down nearly 25 percent — dipping below 20 million a night. The decline can be attributed to greater competition, Fox executives say, including a rival singing competition, “The Voice” on NBC, that they once dismissed. All of which is clearing the way for some “creative reinvigoration” at the show, said Kevin Reilly, the president of entertainment for Fox.Eugene Polley, the inventor of the remote control device on Zenith TVs, died ... Continue reading →
