The Age of Egocasting notes that television remotes go way, way back:
A 1955 version of the remote, called the “Flash-Matic,” was wireless, using a beam of light aimed at photocells in the corners of the television set to change channels and adjust volume. Advertisements for the Flash-Matic pictured a woman, transfixed before the television, her right hand clutching a remote control that is directing a sci-fi laser beam at the TV. Unfortunately, the supposedly sophisticated photo cells on the television were unable to distinguish the remote control’s beams from sunlight, and frustrated Flash-Matic owners found their television tuners oscillating to nature’s rhythms rather than their own.In 1956, a Zenith engineer named Robert Adler solved this problem by using ultra-sonic technology to create the Space Command 400 Remote Control. This remote, which Adler patented, used aluminum rods and tiny hammers to create the pitched sounds that the television set interpreted as “off” or “on” or “channel up” or “channel down.” The sounds emitted were inaudible to humans (although not to dogs, which were known to howl painfully as the Space Command went about its business) and the device itself required no batteries.
It took a long, long time for remotes to become common though:
According to the Consumer Electronics Association, it was 1985 before more televisions were sold with remotes than without. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, however, 99 percent of all television sets and 100 percent of all VCRs sold in the United States came with remote control devices, and infrared and digital technology had replaced Adler’s miniature ultrasonics. In 2000, the average household contained four remote controls.
One reason remotes didn’t catch on was that there were so few channels:
The original purpose of the remote control, as Zenith’s president put it at the time of its creation, was to “tune out annoying commercials.” But it was a federal regulation many years later that made the remote control the indispensable household object that it is today. The Federal Communications Commission?s 1972 “Open Skies” decision deregulating satellite communications allowed cable television to become a popular reality in the U.S., as it rapidly did. As one observer noted, “the only people who had an inarguable, demonstrable need for an RCD for their television before the 1970s were the debilitated.” But with the rapid increase in television channel offerings, we all needed the remote simply to navigate television’s many new options. Cable television dramatically increased the range of choices, but it was the remote control, according to James Walker and Robert Bellamy, which “made it easier for viewers to be choosy.”