Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Nonstop inventor made it possible for TV watchers to veg out

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published February 17, 2007

BOISE, Idaho - Hit the mute button for a moment of silence: The co-inventor of the TV remote has died.

Robert Adler, who won an Emmy Award along with fellow engineer Eugene Polley for the device that made couch potatoship possible, died Thursday (Feb. 15, 2007) of heart failure at a Boise nursing home at 93, Zenith Electronics Corp. said Friday.

In his six-decade career with Zenith, Mr. Adler was a prolific inventor, earning more than 180 U.S. patents. He was best known for his 1956 Zenith Space Command remote control, which helped make TV a truly sedentary pastime.

In 2004, he downplayed his role when asked if he felt his invention helped raise a new generation of couch potatoes.

"People ask me all the time - 'Don't you feel guilty for it?' And I say that's ridiculous," he said. "It seems reasonable and rational to control the TV from where you normally sit and watch television."

Mr. Adler joined Zenith's research division in 1941 after earning a doctorate in physics from the University of Vienna. The remote's original purpose was to mute advertisements. Zenith founder Eugene McDonald believed TV viewers would eventually become so fed up with commercials they would forgo television entirely, the company said.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office published his most recent patent application, for advances in touch screen technology, on Feb. 1.

Mr. Adler is survived by his wife, Ingrid.

[Last modified February 17, 2007, 00:58:45]