The following story is 100% real and impressive!
Years ago, near 1970, a customer buys the latest model of TV that has a remote control. Something rare for the time.
The company sends a technician to this good customer’s home to install and set up the TV. Which he does successfully.
The technician waves goodbye and returns to the company’s offices.
The TV is in trouble
But there he is met by an angry supervisor who tells him that the customer called and complains that the expensive TV they sold him is acting crazy.
It changes channels on its own, varies the volume, turns on and off on its own.
What should the technician do, he gets back in the car and returns to the customer’s home.
He controls the TV and thinks everything is fine. So he returns to the office and informs the supervisor that the TV is working fine and he hasn’t found any problems.
TV is in trouble again
The next day at work, his supervisor tells him that the client called again and he is furious. The TV is having a problem. It changes channels on its own, the volume fluctuates, turns itself on and off.
So he sends the technician back to the customer’s house to find out what the problem is.
So the technician goes home and watches TV for hours with the customer. He drinks a few glasses of tea, eats a few cookies. But the TV doesn’t seem to have any problems. It works perfectly. So he says goodbye and leaves.
But when he arrived back at the office, he learned that while he was on his way, the customer called and said that the TV was still not working properly. It changes channels on its own, fluctuates the volume, turns itself on and off.
The television has a problem. Let’s replace it.
So what should the supervisor do, he tells the customer that the TV is probably defective and will be replaced.
Indeed, on the same day the technician takes a new TV (same model) to the customer, installs it and confirms that it works properly.
They take the “old” TV to the lab and test it. But they don’t find any problems.
And as you would expect, in the middle of the day the customer calls again, furious, saying that this TV doesn’t work properly either.
It changes channels on its own, varies the volume, turns on and off on its own.
But this time he is asking for the TV back and his money back.
Everyone in the office is now convinced that something else is to blame. And they have to find it.
So he sends our poor technician to the customer’s house again, with the instruction not to leave until he finds out what is wrong.
Fifth time the technician goes to the customer’s house
He sits down again and watches hours of TV with the customer. Many hours… He drinks his tea and eats his cookies.
No problem again.
Until television starts acting crazy. It changes channels on its own, the volume fluctuates, turns itself on and off. Everything the customer has been describing all this time.
But this time, he hears a noise behind him.
The cause of the TV problem
He turns around and sees a parrot in its cage in the corner of the room.
Parrots can hear and imitate sounds in the ultrasonic spectrum.
The TV remote control worked in the ultrasonic spectrum.
Did you know that parrots can hear ultrasound and can imitate it!
The parrot listened to the ultrasonic sounds emitted by the remote control and quickly realized that if he started to imitate them he could make the TV do whatever he wanted. To him it was a toy!
They moved the parrot to another room and the TV problem was solved!
But why didn’t the parrot do his thing all the previous times the technician went to the house?
Simply because he was not familiar with the technician. To him he was a stranger.
But the fifth time the same man went into the same room with the parrot, the parrot thought he was “their” man and started to behave as he did when he was alone with the customer!
Now that’s debugging!
Photo:
Photo by Andrea Piacquadio: https://www.pexels.com/photo/man-wearing-brown-jacket-and-using-grey-laptop-874242/
