We had one of those TVs when I was a kid... and our dog had one of those metal link collars, and when she would shake her head the TV would change channels, and the volume would change. :). I had forgotten all about that.

My grandmother had one of these.

I somehow discovered that if I took this magnetic screwdriver, and this bent piece of coat hanger and slapped them together, her tv would turn off.

I fucked with her so much she took her tv to a repair shop because she thought it was broken.

Good times.

God I love learning about analog tech! Very creative design!

Funny, when I was a little kid my grandmother had a Zenith TV with that exact remote. I still remember the long throw and clank of those buttons. TV remotes were uncommon then so I thought it was the coolest thing ever. Yeah dating myself here.

Would it have been possible for the speakers of the time to emit those frequencies? Imagining the equivalent of a Twitch raid: "I'm done broadcasting so I'm going to send you to the next channel."

My grandpa had a tv store around the time, and he always told the story of him pulling someone's leg by making them believe the tv was voice activated, with that thing in his pocket. So he covered the click sound by yelling at the tv.

"Again, it required no batteries — much desired by Zenith, as the company didn’t want customers to think a TV was broken when the battery died."

Was this really that big of a concern? Did people really think that LMAO

Interesting purely mechanical design. Our first remote (that didn't have a cable connection) used sound as well, but it was battery powered and as a kid, I could hear at least some of those sounds. It had way more than just 4 buttons though, maybe the mechanical design hits a limit there at some point (or electronics just got cheaper).

If you’ve ever heard someone refer to a TV remote as a “clicker,”

Modern design is boring and ugly as hell compared to what engineers and designers were able to come up with decades back.

That looks like it was so satisfying to click.

This is a really neat way to pull off remote technology. I wonder if there are still any applications for this type of ultrasound remote tech.

Quite ingenious and simple design, even considering the limitations of the time.