Zenith Flash-matic

An odd tech dead end from 1956. I got a hint of this while browsing old radio-TV trade journals, then looked it up.

Zenith was the king of gadgets and gimmicks. Everything they made had at least one fascinating mechanical or electronic feature. The shutter dial on late 30s radios was the best of all. It switched bands by clapping two half-circles in or out of the dial, and had “second and minute” hands for fine and coarse tuning.

In the ’30s they tried remote controls for radios using little battery-powered transmitters, but found that the transmitter was interfering with neighboring radios. In ’56 they tried an optical control for TV, which didn’t bother neighbors but didn’t work very well. The Flash-matic had a focused and triggered flashlight that you held in your hand and aimed at a corner of the screen.

The picture suggests part of the reason for failure. In real life you can’t see a light beam, so you couldn’t tell where you were aiming until you got the desired response from the TV.

Each corner performed a different function. Power on and off in this corner:

The set was never really off when it was able to receive the flashing, so the manual volume control included the real power switch as usual. I suppose this corner was really ‘picture on or off’.

Tune up the channels with this corner:

Down the channels in this corner:

Mute the sound in this corner.

Muting is the part of Flash-matic that became influential, and every remote since then was used mainly to mute commercials.

Regular white light was too broadband in both space and frequency. The sensors responded when you turned on a light in the room, or when sunlight or shadows happened to hit one sensor. Later light-based sensors used infrared LEDs and infrared-sensing diodes, or precisely aimed lasers. Zenith soon solved the problem with a set of four chimes operating above human hearing, which became the default for TV remotes until those more precise forms of light were made possible by improved MATERIALS AND METHODS.

All ideas are floating around in thoughts or genes or dreams. An invention is not an idea. An invention is a long buildup of MATERIALS AND METHODS. When the right combination of MATERIALS AND METHODS is available, an idea can become a product.