The real history of the remote control, then, is one of competing impulses?to take control of your television and to never leave your couch, to hack and to lounge, to do something and nothing. The remote devices that followed the Lazy Bones were marketed not as a means of relaxation, but as a way to fight back against the network oligarchs and their commercial sponsors. By the mid-1950s, a backlash had formed against the excesses of advertising. (Vance Packard's dire warning in The Hidden Persuaders arrived in 1957.) Consumers wanted to protect themselves against brainwashing ad-men, and remote controls offered a means of self-defense. First came the independently-marketed TV Hush and Blab-Off?a volume knob and a mute switch respectively?that could be manipulated from your seat. (The latter was invented by matzo magnate Howard Manischewitz.) But Zenith, too, had a stake in the backlash: The company was pushing its own alternative to broadcast TV, an early version of pay-per-view called Phonevision. In 1955, it introduced the Flash-Matic?a wireless TV remote shaped like a laser gun, so viewers could zap commercials into silence.
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