Arlo and Janis by Jimmy Johnson for January 27, 2022

Yep! The original remote. If you had a brother or sister, you could fight over it.

Been there, done that. Try doing that without a remote now and the TV not syncing to any of the attached gadgets WiFi or wired.

When I broke my leg (age 5) I learned to use a pool cue as a remote control.

[Dana Carvey’s Grumpy Old Man voice] “In MY day, we had to walk across shag carpeting in the wintertime to change the channel on the TV…and we always got zapped. That’s the way it was and we LIKED it!”

It was my job, dad’s remote.

Yup, “someone turn up the sound”. I look around the room as we were alone.

Since I had weak eye sight, I sat on the floor closest to the old Philco TV. Mom would tell me what channel to put it on. Then dad would say “move a little to the left son, you’re blocking my view” or words to that effect. That’s how I learned to tell my left from my right.

Everybody tells the same story on GoComics, about being the de facto remote… except me!

For at least the first few years, my father was so paranoid about his precious TV that we kids weren’t allowed to touch it.

We even had to ask a parent to turn it on or off, so when my Dad was at work, my mother did it.

It obviously made her nervous in case she did something wrong.

When I was 10, we moved overseas, and the TV got a little banged up by military movers…

I think that’s when he lightened up and started having us change channels, etc…

especially after he decided I had a better touch with the vertical hold.

That was my job for years…

but only he was allowed to touch the horizontal, which had no very accessible knob… just a little hole you had to reach into with needle-nose pliers, to turn a plastic thingy … and only as a last resort.

I still don’t understand that…. but I’m no electronics tech.

This is first time I’ve seen mention about either of their parents.

My Dad had one of those too. But most of the time Mom got to be the one to use it.

Did anyone else have one of those motorized aerials you could adjust? It had a little box with a dial on it near the TV so you could “fine-tune” your reception.

Who here was there for the age of boxy tvs and boxy computers?

You had to remember to turn the TV on about ten minutes before the show you wanted to watch came on. Took that long for the tubes to warm up and the picture to settle down.

!960. My father takes me and my brother to our first Phillies game at Connie Mack Stadium. We walk through the tunnel to get to our seats. Wow! So much green! First time I ever saw a baseball game in color.

Nobody in Arlo’s family gets gray hair?

anyone else remember having to “fine tune” the channel?

With five sibs, someone was always within arms length of the TV. Not that we changed channels much with only three choices.

My dad had bad taste in TV shows, so he had to change the channel himself.

Our next-door neighbor had the first remote control TV I ever saw. It was connected to the TV with a wire and would rotate the channel selector when you pushed the button to the right or left. A couple of years later they acquired the first color TV in our neighborhood. Since we lived in a fringe area the color was not good at all.

Now we know where Arlo got his nose

The sales of color TVs surpassed that of B/W sets in 1972. (We got our first color set in the late 1970s.) So – in what year does the flashback panel take place? (At least the TV isn’t a console model inside one of those enormous wooden cabinets that was the principal piece of furniture in the living room!)

Someone mentioned “warming up” the TV. This brings back a number of memories.

Like my Dad racing home because it took about 5 minutes for the TV to warm up.

Like the advent of “instant on” TV. They were still tube-driven, but some genius had the idea to apply a low level of current when the TV was “off” to keep the tubes “warm”.

Like when the TV failed, Dad would get behind, take off the back, pull every visible tube, wrap them in a tissue, put them in a box, and drive to the local hardware store (family-owned, of course) and then use the tube-tester machine until the faulty tube was isolated. The miracle to me was that they almost always had a replacement in stock. Tubes had names like 4ELU81 and V719K.

Like the fact that our TV was a 7-inch Rogers Majestic in a box larger than a large oven.

Like the fact that TV was free and arrived out of the ether.

Like the first time I saw an “instant replay”. Wow. What an impact that invention has had on the human psyche.

Television shows were better when the television had knobs.

So, THAT’S what I was in grade school….

Best voice remote ever!

He thinks his wife is really smart because she knows how to use that thing in the kitchen to heat up food.

What about the voice operated antenna operator? Left…left..a little right…great! Stand there for an hour.

My Dad has eight remotes, my, my three brothers and four sisters.

Dad was smarter than he looked.

Yup I a remote too.

Volume control, color adjustments, On/Off, and Channel Changer – should have formed a union.

When I saw ‘The Apartment’ (1960) and Jack Lemmon’s character had a remote (wired) I thought they made it up.

My grandparents had a Packard-Bell console B & W looking a lot like the one Arlo is working but it had the controls on the other side. It had a remote box about the size of two cigar boxes stacked on top of each other. It had all the controls and a small speaker so you could listen without using the big speaker in the box. And it was connected to the tv by a cable that was 10 or 12 feet long. And you could not disconnect the remote from either end.

I never saw a TV with dials on the left.

First so called “Color TV” was a clear screen sized overlay for your tv picture screen. It had blue at the top, next I think was yellow, then light reddish, and green at the bottom. For long shots, it was sort of great, but close ups, your actor was blue hair, red faced to yellow, with green shirt.

I love to hear what our fathers/mothers and ancestors did as they served during WW 1 & 2, plus Korea and Viet Nam (add Iraq & Afghanistan.) They may not have ribbons and medals galore, but they are heroes.

That’s the way my grampa preferred to operate the TV; there was almost always at least one of us grandkids around the living room but only us older kids were trusted to go outside and ‘tune’ the antenna by pointing it at the transmitter tower (located about 150 miles away atop a mountain about 5000ft higher than us).

The first remotes were connected to the tv via cable.

My Dad did it too……

A great many of us of a certain age have “fond” memories of being a human remote.

I was a voice operated remote from 1959 until 1970

NO! Children were not allowed to touch the TV in any home I knew when I was young. They might break it.

I was the remote and the TV guide.