It took a while, but the world has gotten used to the idea of sending encoded signals through the air. First radio and then TV broadcast signals, satellite signals, cellphones, and now wifi and bluetooth. In amongst those, we also got wireless remote controls for our television sets. There were a lot of different methods and technologies developed to enable us to sit on the couch and change the channel. My family never had a remote control when I was young, as my father didn’t need one- he had children to change the channel for him. So I missed out on one bit of technology that’s still amazing today. It’s the remote that didn’t need wires or batteries or any power source at all.
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The Zenith Space Command went on the market in 1956. It was an improvement over earlier designs that had two problems. First, they depended on a beam of light, but there was interference from sunlight or other light sources, and you had to aim it exactly right to trip the receiver. Second, other wireless remotes depended on batteries, and when they ran down, people thought their TVs were broken. It was the 1950s, after all. Zenith’s Space Command remote used neither light nor batteries, and depended on sound to signal the set receiver. It was a a completely mechanical idea that still impresses us today. Read how it worked at the Verge. -via Metafilter
(Image credit: Marcin Wichary)
Source: neatorama