History
On May 30, 1985, Philips introduced the first universal remote (U.S. Pat. #4774511) under the Magnavox brand name.
In 1985, Robin Rumbolt, William "Russ" McIntyre, and Larry Goodson with North American Philips Consumer Electronics (Magnavox, Sylvania, and Philco) developed the first universal remote control. Shortly after development was completed and patent applications filed, Magnavox initiated the "Smart, Very Smart" campaign, coining the "smart" axiom. McIntyre has claimed that the primary design challenge was fitting the well-crafted, tight code into an extremely limited memory space. At least two subsequent patents followed: US Pat. 4703359, on November 20, 1988 and US Pat. 4951131, in 1989.
In 1987, the first programmable universal, remote control was released. It was created by CL 9, a startup founded by Steve Wozniak, the inventor of the Apple II.
In March 1987, Steve Ciarcia published an article in Byte Magazine entitled "Build a Trainable Infrared Master Controller", describing a universal remote with the ability to upload the settings to a computer. This device had macro capabilities.
Read more about this topic: Universal Remote
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