Couch potatoes everywhere, pick up your remotes and bid Eugene Polley a fond farewell. TV remote control inventor Eugene Polley dies at 96 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18164200 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Polley#History Of course, Tesla was working on it much earlier: Polley's work was involved with televisions: Ok, you can go back to your channel-surfing now.
I remember growing up in the housing projects in Brooklyn and turning the channels of the black and white with a pair of pliers for the nob broke. Mind you there was only seven or so channels then but those pliers were used even back then for surfing.
Yeah, I try to explain that to my kid and his friends... how people used to have to get off their butts, walk over to the TV, and turn a knob manually...then adjust the "rabbit ears"/antenna to get better reception...sometimes having to stand there holding the antenna in mid air just so 'cause if you didn't you'd get nothing but static on the one channel we had up here. I lived in Green Bay in the late 70s...they were fancy and had two stations that were easy to view, and occasionally another one in good weather. Right now, there are two channels available locally... but the signals are digital now and you need a receiver. I bought a mid-range powered antenna for it in order to have enough power to watch the stations. The reception peaks at about 75% with the antenna, and I lose reception if it goes below 70% lol ...in the old analog signals, you'd get static sure...but even if the signal was really weak you'd still be able to see and hear something...unlike digital signals, that fractures into unrecognizable blocks of data when ever weather rolls in...or a large enough bird flies in front of the dish. Hey! I'm gettin' pretty good at this "old man" rant stuff! My son and his friends just sat there, listened to my speech, and said something about downloading the program off the internet later. I told them to mow the lawn and find some girlfriends. Yep...gettin' old lol
Same here but only in Detroit. The was VHF and UHF frequencies, wow how times have changed. I am addicted to my remote and 100+ channels
My mother still has a rotor antenna on her house for her downstairs television. I can't imagine how that thing still works.
