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Originally Posted by bgadow
Last week somebody, I forget now just who, called me at 9:30 at night. I was thinking the other night, you know, that was really rude of them. My wife goes to bed at 9 so it always wakes her up. So last night the phone rings again at 9:30. Its my buddy Hobie. Now, the last time he called me that time of night it was because he drove his car in a ditch & needed someone to come get him. So I guess he is in the ditch again...but no, Hobie, a real character, tells me that I need to put my shoes on & head for the auction barn. He has bought me a television. Only about 5 minutes away but I never go there because you have to wait so long & they don't usually have stuff worth the wait to me. So I get there & he gives it to me-don't know what he paid but I'm sure it was cheap. Yep, a genuine Zenith Flash-Matic complete with working "Ray Gun". Of course, I haven't checked the set out yet. This ones a keeper. Where I'll keep it I don't know!
And, no, I guess it wasn't so rude for him to call me last night!
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Bryan, you do have a rare set. The FlashMatic, introduced in 1955, was the very first attempt by Zenith at wireless remote control; while it worked after a fashion, the system was a colossal flop and was pulled from the market after perhaps a year or even less. Here's why. For openers, while the control system worked well enough when using the small flashlight "ray gun" controller (which was little more than a fancy flashlight--in fact, I would guess any ordinary flashlight with a pulse or "flash" button would have worked as well), there were no protection circuits to prevent stray ambient light from triggering the remote receiver. This meant that if your FlashMatic TV was located near your living room picture window (or any place else where the sun shines brightly in the daytime), on a very sunny day the set would go absolutely bonkers. No kidding. The sun shining on one or more of the four control photocells, each located at a corner of the screen, would cause the remote system to raise and lower volume, turn the set on and off at random, change channels up or down . . . in short, all hell would break loose. Moreover, since the photocells were not identified on the front of the set as to their function (TV on/off, volume/mute, channel up or down), viewers often became confused as to which photocell controlled which operation--here we go again!
A couple years later, IIRC, Zenith introduced its Space Command remote control system. This used ultrasonic signals generated by metal rods, struck by spring-loaded hammers, in a handheld remote controller unit; the receiver at the set was designed to respond to these signals, of course, and operate the various control functions. (Sometimes these would do strange things as well if, for example, the owner's dog was in the same room as the set, and the tags on its collar clinked against each other in such a way as to reproduce just the right frequency to trigger a remote function, such as on/off or volume; some set owners reported being awakened in the middle of the night when their Space Command-equipped TVs would turn on, at full volume, for no apparent reason.)
Later, the mechanical Space Command hand units were replaced by an electronic version which offered more functions. Still later, the controller was designed to produce infrared (IR) control signals; the remote receiver operated on the same principle as the older models, except the IR receiver only responded to infrared control commands. The beauty of the IR system is that it is virtually impossible to trigger it with anything other than signals from its own hand unit (ambient light, sounds, etc.)
I have never, however, heard of any infrared controller (IR is the industry standard for all remote controls these days) being "fooled" by stray light or other signals to which it was not designed to respond. The IR systems are practically foolproof, but I'm sure anyone who has ever owned a Zenith FlashMatic will always have stories to tell about, for example, the sunny summer day when the control circuits went bonkers in the middle of a soap opera or the like. Can you imagine watching, say,
Days of Our Lives on NBC and suddenly having your set switch to
Guiding Light on CBS when the sun hit the photocells that controlled the channel up/down function, or the sound (or the TV itself) suddenly going off when the same stray sunlight hit the cell for the mute/volume/on-off control?
Weird.