A moment's silence, please, for Dr Adler, who died last week. Who the hell is that, I hear you ask. Well, I'll tell you. He was the (co) inventor of the TV Remote and..er some other TV stuff!

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Best known as the "Father of the TV Remote Control," Dr. Robert Adler is responsible for a large number of significant scientific contributions to the electronics industry, including landmark inventions in the field of consumer products and in sophisticated specialized communications equipment. He holds more than 180 patents...
...Dr. Adler developed Zenith's Space Command® ultrasonic remote control for TV sets, the first practical wireless TV remote, which Zenith introduced in 1956...
...Among Dr. Adler's earlier work is the gated-beam tube which... greatly simplified the sound system in television receivers, markedly improving reception by screening out certain types of sound interference while lowering the cost of the sound channel...a synchronizing circuit which permitted demonstrably greater stability in fringe areas of television reception....The electron beam parametric amplifier, developed in 1958 by Dr. Adler jointly with Dr. Glen Wade...used by radio astronomers in the U.S. as well as abroad, and by the U.S. Air Force for long-range missile detection...instrumental in the 1966 public demonstration...of an experimental television display using ultrasonic deflection and modulation of a laser beam to produce a wall-size TV picture without a cathode ray tube...

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He was a busy boy, eh? And he had about a zillion awards, too.