[thepontiacman]

Check out this ad from 1958 about the New TV's with 4 way remote control.

We are now starting into 2020 and just about everyone has a flat screen TV with lots of tech features.
Found this brochure down in a envelope with Gravely tractor manual.
Neat to see just how far things have come.

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[Keith Seymore]

I don't remember having remote control back then.

I was the "remote"...

K

[Stuart]

I can't tell from the brochure, but some of the early remote controls were actually hard wired, with a cable that ran across the floor from your TV to your easy chair. Before electronic tuners were introduced, the remote control would have to operate the mechanical rotary tuner...it would go Ka-Chunk, Ka-Chunk, Ka-Chunk as it cycled through the channels.

Then there was the Zenith Flashmatic:

[gtohunter]

Had a friend way back when and his remote was a "clicker", which is to say it made an audible "click" when you pushed the button. His storm door latch would also change the channel as it went "click" when the door closed!? His zippo would work as well. I don't know what the technology was, but it must have been some audio thing?

[thepontiacman]

The remote in the ad does have hard wire on the end in ad.

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[1965gp]

It’s always cool to look back and see how far we have (or haven’t) come.

[poncho-mike]

I graduated with an engineering degree in 1982 and went to work for IBM.

I worked in the banking equipment goup. One of the first products I worked on was a 30M storage device that maintained data locally at the bank branch. This media storage device was slightly taller than a 2-drawer file and about the same width and depth. It contained two huge hard drives, each with multiple platters that were about the size of the old 33 1/3 albums. A year or so later, we made a major accomplishment by releasing an updated device that was the same size but held 50 or 60M of data.

Hard drives had been around since 60s, but they were huge. Our technology demo room had a mid-60s IBM media storage unit that was about the size of a washing machine, but only had 2M of storage capacity. We kept it around to show how far media storage had come.

I had no idea how quickly things were changing when I went to work there. The first IBM Personal Computers became available a few months before I started, but they were so expensive they were only used for commercial applications. Other companies were already making PCs, but they were expensive too. Early PCs used floppy drives (remember those) instead of hard drives, and only had about 100 - 200K of memory. I remember being amazed when I was told the IBM PC had a whopping 16K of Ram.

Computer storage began shrinking rapidly by the mid-80s. Does anybody remember the Iomega zip drive? Today we have USB flash drives that store terabytes of data. It's incredible how fast and compact data storage has become.

[george kujanski]

Bought a Motorola Quasar tv back in the mid 70’s. It had. 2 button remote. Pushing the button, (actually a small lever) would cause a hammer to hit an aluminum bar causing a high frequency sound pulse. One button was for the on/off function IIRC and the second one would cause the tuning motor to advance the channel.

As mentioned rattling some keys would trigger the receiver also. Tech of the time!

Glad it’s come as far as it has.

George

[242177P]

Originally Posted by gtohunter

Had a friend way back when and his remote was a "clicker", which is to say it made an audible "click" when you pushed the button. His storm door latch would also change the channel as it went "click" when the door closed!? His zippo would work as well. I don't know what the technology was, but it must have been some audio thing?

It was actually a tone. The click was quite audible, while the tone itself was almost inaudible. A spring loaded hammer would smack a tuning fork of sorts. Zippos have a distinctive ring that accompanies the snap, and if you've ever bumped into a screen door (who hasn't) you'll instantly recognize the tone which follows that crash.

Edit - treed by George. Because pizza.

[400 4spd.]

Originally Posted by george kujanski

Bought a Motorola Quasar tv back in the mid 70’s. It had. 2 button remote. Pushing the button, (actually a small lever) would cause a hammer to hit an aluminum bar causing a high frequency sound pulse. One button was for the on/off function IIRC and the second one would cause the tuning motor to advance the channel.

As mentioned rattling some keys would trigger the receiver also. Tech of the time!

Glad it’s come as far as it has.

George

We bought a Quasar in the early 80's. Very high tech piece, but I can't remember why!

[Brian Baker]

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

I don't remember having remote control back then.

I was the "remote"...

K

So was I and I grew up in the 70's.

[Jack Gifford]

1958 was my first year working for GE. For Christmas I bought a console TV (monochrome) at the employee outlet store- gave it to my parents and wired the channel-change remote under the living room floor to the end table by their sofa. More times than not they still had to jump up and reset the volume after changing channels! Nevertheless they did use it for many years.

As for computing progress- in about 1971 I was in a development group of five engineers who developed and patented Stromberg Carlson's first computer controlled central switching system (also an industry first). Core memory was so expensive and bulky that for our prototype (a PBX), we had to cram ALL of the code and data into eight Kbytes! [Anybody else guilty of writing self-modifying code?]

[dataway]

I recently bought a few 80 Gig micro SD cards ...the size of your thumbnail. Just 20 years ago if one of those were found it would have literally been considering alien technology.

You can pretty much put the library of Congress on something the size of your thumbnail.

You could put more music on this thing than you could have fit in an entire house full of vinyl albums.

I have this gut feeling that we are on the cusp of another great leap in technology, can't wait to see what it brings.

[242177P]

Originally Posted by dataway

I recently bought a few 80 Gig micro SD cards ...the size of your thumbnail. Just 20 years ago if one of those were found it would have literally been considering alien technology.

1956. It's FIVE whole megabytes. You'd need two of the 24 discs just to hold this picture.

[Half-Inch Stud]

Never been fond of digital assemblies.

Still work with vacuum tubes at home and sometime on the job.

Still work wih FETs and BJTs on the job.

Last time I "coded" was ~1986 @ college & work. Decided SW was not engineering. Rather do mu calcs in Excel. Hendrickson went 1 step further and turned hic calcs to Applets. A good move.

[thepontiacman]

I also found paperwork for this brush burner/ torch in the same envelope with the Gravely tractor manual that I was looking for.

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[Johnny99]

Originally Posted by gtohunter

Had a friend way back when and his remote was a "clicker", which is to say it made an audible "click" when you pushed the button. His storm door latch would also change the channel as it went "click" when the door closed!? His zippo would work as well. I don't know what the technology was, but it must have been some audio thing?

We had set in the mid to late 60's that had a remote like that. I remember Mom had a gold beaded belt that "jangled" and sometimes the television would shut off when she walked into the room

[OG68]

The old standard was that the level of technology would double every seven years. Now it’s about 3-4 or less.

[gtohunter]

Originally Posted by Keith Seymore

I don't remember having remote control back then.

I was the "remote"...

K

Fortunately, there were only about 3 channels back then so it didn't take too long to "surf" !