The Zenith Space Command, one of the first wireless television remotes ever to exist, is a monument to a time before we took the remote for granted. It also just so happened to contain one of the most influential and intriguing buttons in history. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
In today\u2019s digital age, it sometimes feels like hardware has taken a back seat to the software that drives our devices. Button of the Month<\/a> is a monthly column that explores the physical pieces of our phones, tablets, and controllers we interact with every day.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n If you\u2019ve ever heard someone refer to a TV remote as a \u201cclicker,\u201d it\u2019s because of Robert Adler\u2019s 1956 creation. The elegant Star Trek<\/em>-esque gadget pioneered a durable, clicky action for controlling gadgets and a simplicity of form that has since been naively abandoned.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When Zenith first started experimenting with wireless remote controls, it used beams of light that the television could receive to communicate a command, eventually debuting the Flash-Matic<\/a> in 1955. It only took a year in the market for this idea to be abandoned due to its sensitivity to full-spectrum light from the sun and lightbulbs. So Zenith\u2019s engineers tried an even simpler\u00a0approach that didn\u2019t require batteries at all, using sound instead of light.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The Space Command is a product of mechanical engineering rather than electrical. By pressing a button on the remote, you set off a spring-loaded hammer that strikes a solid aluminum rod in the device, which then rings out at an ultrasonic frequency. Each button has a different length rod, thus a different high-frequency tone, which triggers a circuit connected to a microphone in the television to finish the command.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Again, it required no batteries \u2014 much desired by Zenith, as the company didn\u2019t want customers to think a TV was broken when the battery died. This also did not require the remote to be pointed directly at a receiver, which was a major flaw with the Flash-Matic. In 1956, Adler addressed problems we still live with today: I\u2019m constantly swapping out AAA batteries in my home, and I regularly move things out of the way of my Xbox receiver so my infrared remote can reach it.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales \/ The Verge<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n I found my Space Command, the 1970s model one you\u2019re seeing in our photos, in a bin of leftover remotes from my father\u2019s TV repair business. It\u2019s mostly been a retro-futuristic tchotchke on my shelf, but sometimes I pick it up and play. Pressing down a button on this tuning fork contraption gives you beautifully clicky (dare I say chalky<\/a>?) feedback, almost like you\u2019re trying to ignite a flame on an outdoor grill<\/a>. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n The buttons stand tall and stiff, so there\u2019s little room for error. Though you don\u2019t hear the ultrasonic frequency they emit, you do hear (and feel) the clack of the hammer against the aluminum rods and a simultaneous clink of confirmation when your finger hits the body of the remote. The button-pressing experience is slow and literally clunky, but it gives you a feeling of accomplishment, even if it is just to increase the volume on the TV.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Just click this video and take a listen:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Why ultrasound? In Adler\u2019s own words, from a 2004 interview with the Television Academy Foundation<\/a>:<\/p>\n<\/div>\n It was clear to all of us that we couldn\u2019t use radio. We had a bunch of radio engineers here, there wouldn\u2019t have been much of a problem, but the radio went through walls. And it would work on the next door neighbor\u2019s set, or if you lived in an apartment.\u00a0<\/p>\n Now today, of course, you say, well, why don\u2019t you encode the signal?\u00a0 We can\u2019t encode the signal because we can\u2019t use 100 vacuum tubes. It was a trap. And I came up with ultrasound because I knew that ultrasound in the air would not go through walls, so it was like ordinary speaking\u2026<\/p>\n That part was logical. I didn\u2019t want it to be heard, so it had to be either subsonic or supersonic. Subsonic didn\u2019t make sense from a technical standpoint, so there you are. It had to be ultrasound.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n Zenith\u2019s mechanical Space Command lived on for a quarter of a century\u00a0as the default way to control a television. Even today, some people still call their remotes \u201cthe clicker.\u201d It did have its flaws: people found that jingling keys or coins could be picked up by the TV\u2019s microphones and accidentally change the channel, and the high-pitch frequencies from the remote were discernible by pets. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n Eventually, after more and more functions were added to the TV-watching experience from menus, cable, and VCRs, TV companies started to develop remotes with infrared blasters and advanced circuit boards. We ended up with dozens of squishy buttons placed sporadically over slabs of plastic that are glued together \u2014 mostly an afterthought and often tossed into the junk drawer at home.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n 1\/8<\/p>\n Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales \/ The Verge<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n 1\/8<\/p>\n Photo by Amelia Holowaty Krales \/ The Verge<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Modern universal remotes can be messy and complicated to the point some people started taping over large parts of the device<\/a> to avoid confusion. But in the age of Roku<\/a>, streaming devices have largely stripped the TV remote down to the new essentials: play, home, volume, and voice control. We\u2019re back to a minimalist aesthetic for the quintessential coffee table gadget, embodying some (but not all) of the values the early Space Command delivered. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n