ROBERT ADLER, 93

The eclectic wonder of the world known as Sniderman points us to Sabs (pronounced with a long A) and his alert to the death of Robert Adler, inventor of that crazy little thing called the television remote control. The Associated Press reports:

Adler won an Emmy Award along with fellow engineer Eugene Polley for the device that made couch potatoship possible. He died Thursday of heart failure at a Boise nursing home.

In his six-decade career with Zenith, Adler was a prolific inventor, earning more than 180 U.S. patents. He was best known for his 1956 Zenith Space Command remote control, which helped make TV a truly sedentary pastime.

The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences awarded Adler and co-inventor Polley, another Zenith engineer, an Emmy in 1997 for the landmark invention.

Adler's last patent application -- involving touch screen technology -- was dated Feb. 1, 2007.

Sabs technically gets the point, but we wouldn't have known without Sniderman. Point, then, to Dave in the Great Game of Mortality.