I don't know exactly why I thought about this today, but I realized that it was kind of a charming memory.  It also provides an astounding contrast between the technology of today and that of my childhood.  I also realized that if I related it, it would be inescapably an "in my day!" story.   OK, so I'm old.  I'll have to live with that.

 When I was a kid, my parents got a TV with a remote control.  We'd never had a TV with a remote control before.  If you wanted to turn the volume up or down you had to get up, walk over to the TV and turn the knob.   If you wanted to change what you were watching to one of the other 6 channels that were available on the VHF dial, you had to get up and turn the knob.  That's right, 7 channels, not counting UHF, which didn't really come in anyway.   We got CBS on channel 2, NBC on channel 4.  Channel 5 was a local channel.  7 was ABC, 9, 11, and 13 local.  

But I digress.  Sometime around my 10th year, my parents aquired a TV that had a remote control!  I don't even remember if they got it new.  It might have been a hand-me-down from a relative.  But it had a remote control!  It was about the size of a pack of cigarettes, just a little longer than it was wide.  It was a little thicker than that pack of cigarettes.  It had a good heft to the hand.   Our TV remote had exactly 4 buttons no it.  One to turn the volume up and one to turn it down.  It had a button that turned the TV on or off, and one that made the channel change on up.  It had a stylish look to it.  Kind of art-deco.  

 The 'push' of these buttons was not at all like that of a modern remote.  Instead, it took a fair amount of force to depress the button as if pushing it was pulling against a spring.   As it turns out, it was doing exactly that.  the 'throw' of the button was long, maybe a quarter of an inch.   When you had pushed the button almost all the way down, there would suddenly be a snap, like that spring you were pushing against was suddenly released.  And when it was released, there would be this pleasing little "plink" sound.  Each button had it's own distinct little plink.  When it plinked, the TV would respond with the appropriate change. 

When one used the remote, one would generally point it at the TV and plink it.   The end that you pointed at the TV was covered by a thick screen.  Whatever signal escaped from the remote came through that screen, but the screen also obscured the view of the inside.  So it was a little  mysterious.  I thought it was the plink sound itself that was the signal, but my Dad, probably pulling my leg, insisted that there was a laser inside.  I was skeptical.  Lasers certainly had been invented, but they were still kind of science fiction.  Scientists in big mysterious laboratories had them.  They were not yet available in consumer products.  Plus, the remote didn't need a battery.  It didn't even have a place to put a battery.  My Dad claimed it was a special kind of percussive laser; that the energy came from a little hammer inside striking an object.   Kind of like a spark coming from a flint, except instead of a spark, there was a little flash of laser.  Yeah, right.  I didn't really believe it, but at the same time, the remote didn't really work unless you pointed it at the TV, so it seemed to be some kind of line-of-sight system.

I spend a considerable amount of time, trying to peer past the screen on the front with a flashlight.  All I could see was four little circles in the shadows of the interior of the box.    I wanted to take it apart and see what was inside.  My Dad remembered what happened the time I had a similar curiosity about how his self-winding watch worked, so that idea was strongly nixed.  Years later, I finally got my wish.  The TV was dead, and the remote was worthless, and I got to take it apart!   The four circles were the ends of four little metal rods, each of a different length.   Each button was connected through a spring to a little hammer that would rear back when you pushed the button, until it was released.  When the hammer struck the metal rod: 'plink!'.   No spark, no burst of laser energy, just the sound of the plink. 

I never got to take apart the TV - too dangerous, I was warned.  But I imagine that there must have been 4 little corresponding tuning forks inside the TV that would somehow transfer the sound energy emitted by the remote into a response of the TV.  I wonder how that worked?

 I sit here now and look at my smart phone.  It's maybe a third of the volume of that remote control and it does so much.  It's amazing to see how far things have come.  But that little tuning fork remote was a pretty cute and clever piece of work!