This is an I-Heart podcast.

Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of IHeart Radio.

Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry.

And I'm Tracy V. Wilson.

This is another one of those episodes that was intended to be an assortment, a collection of things. And then it became about just one of

those things. Yeah. I was planning to write about three or maybe four very mundane things that we use every day in our lives

and their origins. But then when I got to the story of the TV remote control, I discovered

there was a drama. In some ways, it's a one-sided drama, but we'll talk about it. This is

one that's really relatable, I think, probably for anyone that has worked for a big company

and has felt like their contributions are lauded one moment and forgotten the next.

I think a lot of us can relate to that.

But it is also a story about how two very different people perceive their work in the same space and how in some cases

that work is perceived differently over time by those around them and even their employer.

The initial time period where a TV remote control was being developed was actually pretty

short. We recently talked about spray paint and how that had multiple options of people that get credited

as the person that are over literal decades.

But this is like, within 18 months, two people emerged, each of whom sometimes are called

the father of the remote control.

And one of those versions that they created quickly supplanted the other.

So we're going to talk about those very early years and the way that two inventors who were pivotal to the story

have been talked about in different ways by the company that they both worked for.

So we're starting a little earlier than that,

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