Cleats by Bill Hinds for September 22, 2009

Hmm. Is a TV clicker a gadget different than a remote?

No, it’s amazingly similar to.

Is the similarity really AMAZING?? I must know more. This better not turn out to be one of Bill’s Texan vocab thangs.

For the record, I am not afraid of sounding technologically clueless.

My late father-in-law (grew up in Georgia) called it “the button.”

Now I remember the context in which I first heard about ‘clickers’: http://tinyurl.com/mchkae

I’m old enough to remember the original television remotes which did produce an audible click when operated. In fact, our first remote-controlled television (our first color TV, as well) had the old mechanical tuner with an electric motor attached, so you could change channels manually or with the “clicker”; a pointless redundancy, as it turned out.

our early remotes only had on / off. channel up / down and volume up / down and sometimes did click.

i guess this would make Jack a “career surfer.”

My uncle had a very early remote for his TV. My dad figured out he could change the channel by jingling the coins in his pocket.

I remember wanting a TV with a remote, but it was too expensive. And the first, earliest remotes were wired. Yup, cable connecting them to all things: Converter Boxes, VCR’s.