If the commercials are too long and you get bored to listen them, shut up the TV volume and just watch the pictures on the screen.

The first prototype of  TV was introduced by John Logie Baird in the 1926 in London. The invention was very appreciated by the people. In the 1955 an american engineer of  the Zenith Radio Corporation Eugene Theodore Polley made the first model of wireless remote control for consumer television.

Eugene Theodore Polley

The shape of that device, named Flash-Matic, reminded a revolver, but unlike the revolver it shot a flash of light to the TV for changing channels and a button turn down the TV volume during the commercials.  The cost of the first commercial device was around 150$, but the channels sometimes got changed on its own. He was proud of his invention and he showed it to everyone. It was a revolution because nobody had to stand up from the chair for changing channel.

Wireless remote control “Flash-Matic”

Bob Adler, a work colleague of Polley, tried to prove the invention of the first remote control was of him and the name was Space Command rather than Flash-Matic. Since the Polley’s and Adler’s inventions were good products, the Zenith Radio Corporation decided to share the both ideas. Polley and Adler begun to work together in the same project. In the 1996 they shared the “Technology & Engineering Emmy Award for Pioneering development of wireless remote control for consumer Television”. When Adler died, Polley said: “the remote control was the most important discovery after the wheel. We made something for the humanity”. Although “the Technology and Engineering Emmy Award” for both inventors, Polley was considered the father of the wireless remote control for consumer television and he received the “IEEE Consumer Electronics Award for the contribution to technology and the wireless remote control for television and other consumer electronic products” in the 2009. He died in 2012.