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Original thread:
Post 22 made on Wednesday January 17, 2018 at 15:41
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On January 17, 2018 at 10:50, tomciara said...
The first business location I had was in my garage, and I worked on "color televisions" among other things.

Those early remotes (volume up/down, channel up ONLY) had little hammers that banged different length rods, emitting a different audio frequency. The TV had a microphone that "listened", and the mic circuit had tuned coils that had to be tweaked to the right frequency for the right function. That activated motors for volume or channel change. Channel change was from 2 to 13, then back around to 2 again. If you missed channel 4, you had to go all the way around again, since it only went "channel up".

My aunt & uncle had one of those TVs- I think their dog chewed the remote and with kids, expenses and a new home, he decided that he wasn't going to replace it. He worked for the old AC-Sparkplug plant as an engineering technician, which eventually became Delphi and knowing how it worked, he took a wooden dowel, cut notches along it, cut a piece of aluminum bar and fastened that to the end by drilling a hole in the bar and using a brad nail. All he had to do to get it to work is rub a pen across the grooves but it took a little trial and error to find the correct frequency. Probably brought his oscilloscope up and connected a mic for that although he may have had a spectrum analyzer.
My mechanic told me, "I couldn't repair your brakes, so I made your horn louder."


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