Eugene Polley, 1915–2012

last updated 8 January 2015

Couch potatoes everywhere owe a debt to Eugene Polley. In 1955, the Zenith Electronics engineer invented the Flash-Matic, the world’s first wireless remote control, forever changing the way we watch television and saving a generation of children from endlessly marching between couch and dial. The Flash-Matic, which sent a beam of light toward the set to control channels and sound, was shaped like a snub-nosed revolver, which Polley said let viewers “shoot out” commercials like in a Western. “Just think!” Zenith’s ads proclaimed. “You can even shut off annoying commercials while the picture remains on the screen.”

Born in Chicago to a well-to-do mother and a bootlegger father, Polley “demonstrated a remarkable mechanical aptitude from an early age,” said the Chicago Tribune. He joined Zenith as a parts clerk at age 20, and rose from the stockroom to the engineering department, eventually earning 18 U.S. patents. But he always felt he was denied proper credit for creating the remote control, said The New York Times. A year after the Flash-Matic was brought to market, a fellow Zenith engineer, Robert Adler, created a controller that used high-frequency sound waves; it quickly became the dominant remote. For decades, Adler was erroneously credited as the wireless remote’s sole inventor, even though our modern infrared TV controls have more in common with Polley’s design.

Polley was often rankled at being overlooked, said The Guardian (U.K.), but he reveled in the remote’s lasting effects. “Maybe I did something for humanity,” he said, “like the guy who invented the flush toilet.”