New Seven-Function Remote Control for Color 1959 RCA

more at http://quickfound.net/

Silent, soundtrack missing.

Originally a public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.

The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_control

Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

...The first remote intended to control a television was developed by Zenith Radio Corporation in 1950. The remote, called "Lazy Bones," was connected to the television by a wire. A wireless remote control, the "Flashmatic," was developed in 1955 by Eugene Polley. It worked by shining a beam of light onto one of four photoelectric cells, but the cell did not distinguish between light from the remote and light from other sources. The Flashmatic also had to be pointed very precisely at one of the sensors in order to work.

In 1956, Robert Adler developed "Zenith Space Command," a wireless remote. It was mechanical and used ultrasound to change the channel and volume. When the user pushed a button on the remote control, it struck a bar and clicked, hence they were commonly called a "clicker," but it sounded like a "clink" and the mechanics were similar to a pluck. Each of the four bars emitted a different fundamental frequency with ultrasonic harmonics, and circuits in the television detected these sounds and interpreted them as channel-up, channel-down, sound-on/off, and power-on/off. Later, the rapid decrease in price of transistors made possible cheaper electronic remotes that contained a piezoelectric crystal that was fed by an oscillating electric current at a frequency near or above the upper threshold of human hearing, though still audible to dogs. The receiver contained a microphone attached to a circuit that was tuned to the same frequency. Some problems with this method were that the receiver could be triggered accidentally by naturally occurring noises or deliberately by metal against glass, for example, and some people could hear the lower ultrasonic harmonics.

The impetus for a more complex type of television remote control came in 1973, with the development of the Ceefax teletext service by the BBC. Most commercial remote controls at that time had a limited number of functions, sometimes as few as three: next channel, previous channel, and volume/off. This type of control did not meet the needs of Teletext sets, where pages were identified with three-digit numbers. A remote control that selects Teletext pages would need buttons for each numeral from zero to nine, as well as other control functions, such as switching from text to picture, and the normal television controls of volume, channel, brightness, color intensity, etc. Early Teletext sets used wired remote controls to select pages, but the continuous use of the remote control required for Teletext quickly indicated the need for a wireless device. So BBC engineers began talks with one or two television manufacturers, which led to early prototypes in around 1977–1978 that could control many more functions. ITT was one of the companies and later gave its name to the ITT protocol of infrared communication.