created by engineer eugene polley (above) in 1955, the zenith flash-matic was the world’s first wireless tv remote control and looked a lot like a flashlight. a beam of light had to be aimed accurately at one of the 4 corners of the tv set for it to work, the remote enabling you to either turn the tv on/off, change channels or mute the sound. the flash-matic system was pretty frustrating in the daytime due to the fact that the sun had more chance of hitting the sensors than the remote-holding human and would cause the tv to sporadically change channel.