Andy Bennett – Digital Creative

One of the design objects I hate in life are remote controls. Most of them look like they’re on steroids, big, plastic, bulbous and just well…ugly – unfortunately I have about 4 of them! Well I thought it was about time I found a way to get rid of them and rather than replacing them with 1 big ugly plastic remote, I found one of these baby’s on Ebay! It’s the first ever learning universal remote control. Created in 1985 by General Electric the RRC600 is pretty big and not very ergonomic but it’s a thing of beauty. What’s really great about it is the fact that it’s been designed to be future proof (well kind of). It learns the signals from any remote control and can have up to four sources programmed into it. The only thing it doesn’t have is the concept of moving up, down, left and right like Freeview boxes or Sky TV. It does look quite funny using it on my Macbook as the remote is about half the size of it – but the fact that this 22 year old gadget works I find pretty impressive! It makes you think…

This post is tagged control, futureproof technology, general electric, remote, RRC600