by Playfuls Staff |
21st February 2007
Robert Adler, one of two men credited with inventing the remote control, has died aged 93, the New York Tines reported Wednesday.
Adler died in Boise, Idaho from heart [more] failure, the report quoted his wife as saying.
Born in Vienna, Austria in December 1914, Adler received his doctorate in physics from the University of Vienna at the age of 24, but left the country after it was annexed by Nazi Germany in 1938. He arrived in the US in 1941 via Belgium and England and was immediately hired by Zenith, who set him up with his own private laboratory.
Adler went on to file more than 200 US patents, the most famous of which came in 1956, outlining the basic design for what would become the Space Command ultrasonic remote control, which used high- frequency sound to control a television. The sound wave was generated by hitting a spring-loaded button that produced a clicking sound when pushed.
The ultrasonic technology remained the standard of the television industry for 25 years until remote-control units using infrared signals were introduced in the early 1980s.
Adler received the Outstanding Technical Achievement Award of the Institute of Radio Engineers in 1958, and in 1997 the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded Adler and Eugene Polley, another Zenith engineer, an Emmy for their invention.
Adler also invented technology to improve television reception and was a pioneer in touch-screen technology, developing a system in the early 1980s that is still in use today. The US Patent and Trademark Office published Adler's most recent patent application, for advances in touch-screen technology, on February 1.
Adler retired as Zenith's vice president for research in 1979, but remained as a technical consultant until 1999, when Zenith was sold to LG Electronics.
© 2007 DPA
