Dennis Lee Bieber  wrote:
> On Sun, 04 Aug 2019 12:45:09 +0100, Daniel James 
> declaimed the following:
>
>> anyone would deliberately emulate 1960s (1950s?) TV technology when
>
> Remotes of that period had just two buttons... Power and Volume. And volume
> tended to be "mute, low, medium, high" IN SEQUENCE.
>
> And the remote functioned by sending an ultrasonic whistle chirp (each
> button compressed a bellows against a spring loaded valve -- when the
> pressure was high enough, the valve would open and the air would pass
> through a tuned frequency whistle port; different frequency for power vs
> volume).

In the US, Zenith was the first TV manufacturer to introduce a successful
wireless remote control, in 1956.

The controller had two, later four, buttons, controlling channel and
volume. The two-button control simply advanced the channels circularly, and
the volume button rotated through the sequence low, medium, high, mute.

The four-button control had channel up and down and volume (as before),
plus power on/off.

The “Space Command” technology was based not on whistles, but on resonant
aluminum rods at two or four different ultrasonic frequencies, which were
struck by spring-actuated hammers when the corresponding button was
pressed.

This system persisted for more than two decades, when infrared remotes were
introduced.

--
-michael - NadaNet 3.1 and AppleCrate II:  http://michaeljmahon.com

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