Well, I hope this is off-topic enough for this thread.
Before reading the spoiler, take a look at this and see if you can figure out what the heck it is.
Spoiler:
I was reading
Hedy's Folly: The Life and Breakthrough Inventions of Hedy Lamarr, the Most Beautiful Woman in the World by Richard Rhodes this morning and came across the following passage, which led to this post:
Quote:
.....Amarena [Carmelo "Nino" Amarena, fellow inventor and electrical engineer expert in the field of digital wireless communications] wasn’t sure why she [Hedy Lamarr] thought of radio when the Mandl dinner table discussions had concerned wire guidance, but there is reference in the working patent documents that Hedy’s son Anthony provided to me to a particular 1939 Philco console-model radio with a unique new feature: the retail radio market’s first wireless remote control, a six-inch cabinetry cube with a dialer on top with ten finger holes, like the dialer on a dial telephone. The holes matched up with a ring of small indentations impressed into the surface of the cube printed with the call letters of the radio stations set up to be dialed. Inserting a finger into the dialer hole corresponding to the station to be dialed, rotating the dialer, and letting it return signaled the radio to change frequency to that of the desired station. There were dial positions for up to eight radio stations, plus a dial position for volume control and another that would turn the radio off. (It had to be turned on by hand.) Philco called its new remote the Mystery Control. It was essentially a one-tube radio that communicated on a fixed frequency with either one of two models of console radios, the less expensive 39-55RX or the more elaborate 39-116RX. Each had a corresponding fixed-frequency accessory receiver inside its cabinet that processed the signals from the remote.
........The 116RX was Philco’s top-of-the-line model, with a ten-tube radio and expensive cabinetry; it cost $162.50, which would be about $2,600 today, and only 20,480 were manufactured.
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