The Clapper: Light work

There's maybe nothing worse than when you sit down on the couch or you get into bed and you discover that there's a light on. And then you have to get up and trudge across the room or across the house just to turn it off. Well, what if there was a better way? If instead of having to get up and turn off the light, all you had to do was clap twice. From The Verge and Vox Media, this is Version History, a show about the best and worst and strangest and most important products in tech history. I'm David Pierce, and today it's time for the story of the clapper. Are you a pet owner? Every six seconds, a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill over $1,000. Always an unwelcome surprise. That's where Fetch comes in. Fetch is the most complete pet insurance for dogs and cats, according to consumeradvocate.org. You get paid back up to 90% of vet bills at any vet in the U.S. and Canada with claims paid back in as little as two days. Go to fetchpet.com slash save right now for your free quote. That's fetchpet.com slash save. Avoiding your unfinished home projects because you're not sure where to start? Thumbtack knows homes, so you don't have to. Don't know the difference between matte paint finish and satin? Or what that clunking sound from your dryer is? With Thumbtack, you don't have to be a home pro. You just have to hire one. You can hire top-rated pros, see price estimates, and read reviews all on the app. Download today. All right, we're back. It's time for the clapper. Yes. Joining me in studio, The Verge's V song. Hello. Heidi. You are our senior reviewer. you do wearables, but I feel like you're also our unofficial correspondent for Cursed Objects. Yes, I believe my new title is Senior Cursed Tech Dystopian Reviewer. So, yeah. This is what we're here for. This is The Clapper. Also joining us remotely, Alison Marsh, historian of technology and the past forward columnist for IEEE Spectrum. Alison, welcome. It's great to be here. Thank you so much for coming. What is your home automation history like? Like, are you a person who would have used a Clapper at any point in history here? The Clapper came out when I was a kid and I loved the idea. I absolutely wanted one. Begged my parents. No deal. Nothing. Never got one. And, you know, that streak is pretty much kept. I have zero home automation at my house right now. Nothing? Nothing. Nothing. So if you just clap in your house, nothing interesting or cool will happen at all. Absolutely nothing at all happens if I clap in my house. That's so sad. Also here with us is a clapper. This is not the first clapper. It's one of the ones that came later that actually got much better, as we will get to the first one. By and large, not great. But this one actually seems to largely respond. So let's see if we clap it off. There we go. This clapper is just a big square box. It is the most beige box of all beige boxes. You can plug two things into it. We have a lamp plugged into it, And I am confident that lamp will come on and off dozens of times in the course of this episode. I'm very excited about it. So the story of this thing is kind of long. So we're just going to barrel through this because it's a weird history and I'm very excited to talk about all of it. But first, Allison, I'm hoping you can help me set the scene a little bit here because this is the early 1980s. And this is, I would say, this is like the very beginning of the computer age. There are computers that are starting to exist, but this is not really yet the sort of computer era. But what this does seem to be is a everybody is bringing wacky new kinds of devices into their house to help them do house things. What is going on at this moment in time in America? Yeah, I mean, it's a time of hope, but it's also a time of, you know, sort of the Cold War is winding down. And, you know, we're coming out on top in that one. So it has a lot of enthusiasm, positive. And you're like, what can technology do for us? And pretty much everything is, you know, the world is limitless. And we're like, OK, how are we going to harness that and make our lives better? So don't forget, this is also when we get the microwave oven. So it's all great. Yeah, that's actually it's a perfect example. And I think I was looking at this and there is this weird running thread at this time of how can we make every single thing somewhat more convenient, right? Like the microwave oven is probably the best example, but this is also the time the answering machine is really starting to take off. There is just this sense that maybe technology can solve all of our problems. And so we are going to over technology every single thing we possibly can. Wow. Which makes this my absolute favorite era of American history. And the Clapper story actually starts in Canada in the early 1980s with two people, Peter Lilliquist of Canada and Ku Chen of Taiwan. They had this idea that they wanted a simpler way to manage a home automation system. They were just like, we want a way to automate some of the things in our house very easily. I think the idea of I would like to not stand up to go turn off that light is like an idea that has existed as long as lights have existed. Have that every night. Yeah. Because the bedroom lights in my house are, the bed is here and then the light is all the way across the room. And sometimes you're just like, no, I'm just going to fall asleep with the light on. Or I do because I'm very lazy. And the funny thing is, is that I have smart lights. So I could just ask my smart assistant to turn the lights off for me. But it's dubious because my house is very vertical. And so the Wi-Fi doesn't always work, even though I have a Wi-Fi mesh extender. So, you know, they're on to something. home automation and not wanting to turn off the light, it's a problem that still exists. Very much so. And I remember I used to sleep with a golf club under my bed, which was theoretically like my security system, but also because it was the perfect length I could reach over and just kind of whack the light bulb off at night. That's great. Fabulous. Can't recommend it enough. But anyway, so these people run with this very obvious idea of what if I didn't have to get up to turn the lights off? And they invent a thing that is going to let them clap to do so. And they bring a prototype to this guy named Joseph P. Dot. Joseph P. Dot ends up being the sort of central figure to this story and is a really fascinating guy who is not an inventor, but a product guy. He's a marketing guy. He is a person who is able to get the word out. He makes a lot of really exciting stuff. He's the ad man. He totally has it. Yes. And he's very good at this. His claim to fame at the time, this was right around the time he's also starting to work on another project called the Chia Pet. Oh my God, he's Don Draper. Truly. Chia Pet, like one of the all-time great, Allison, marketing success stories, right? I mean, I got one, so yes, obviously. Brainwash all of America. Yeah. So to some extent, this whole story is going to be about taglines. So let me just very quickly play you a Chia Pet commercial, because it's important to me that this is stuck in your head for the rest of your day today. There's a new pet. Chia. Chia Pet. The pottery that grows. It's fun, easy, and educational. Just soak your chia overnight. Then spread the seeds like this. Ch-ch-ch-chia. Chia Pets and Trees. The pottery that grows. The fact that we all know that, right? Ch-ch-ch-chia. Yeah, so that ends up being, this is like, becomes an iconic marketing campaign. There was a really great, Joseph P. Dot did an interview, I think with Ad Age, like many, many years later. And they were like, why do you think Ch-ch-ch-chia was so successful? And he was like, we just kept doing it. We basically just beat it into people's brains and it stuck and it worked and repetition is everything. And I think that's exactly right. So anyway, so Joseph P.Dot is this marketing guy. He has a sense of how to make products. He's building this big company. It's called Joseph Enterprises. And they meet with him and they pitch him on the thing that they're working on. Their name for this thing at the time was not the Clapper. V, would you like to guess what the name for this thing was? You're never going to guess it correctly. I'll tell you it was called the Great American Turn-On. No, absolutely not. This did not go through focus testing. So very Canadian, right? The Great American Turn-On was the original name for this product. Nope. Go Canada. It's fabulous. So anyway, Joseph P. Dot, despite the name the Great American Turn-On, is super into this. He helps the two get a patent in the U.S. He spins up manufacturing. They're off and running. This is going to be a whole thing. He's going to market it. This is part of Joseph Enterprises now. They start selling the product when they start selling the product at a drugstore in Washington, D.C., just sort of as a test. They're like, we're just going to get this in front of some people, see if they like it. Again, this sales pitch for this is very straightforward, right? You can turn off your lights without having to get up to turn off your lights. Sold. Absolutely sold. People are in. But they make an important mistake at the very beginning, which is that they forget to say lights. So they start turning on everything. They pitch this as like plug anything into this and you can turn it on just by clapping. People start plugging in their televisions and they start plugging in their televisions to this faulty thing that might actually be triggered by the noise that your television makes when it turns on. So this thing starts immediately shorting out people's televisions. And the thing is like finicky and doesn't work. And spoiler alert, it stays that way for a long time. But it is breaking the devices that are plugged in. Total disaster. Yeah. So this thing like fundamentally just does not work. People like it. People buy it. People are excited about it. It's terrible. Terrible product. Yeah. And so, OK, Allison, here is a bit of research that you and I have both done. And I'm curious to know how far you were able to get in writing about the clapper. Joseph P. Dot ends up in a lawsuit with the inventors of this product who he alleges are essentially trying to scam him and everyone out of money with a failed product that is never going to work. What were you able to learn about this legal fight? I mean, not much. We were talking before and, you know, we the end result is, you know, the original team goes bankrupt. And, you know, it ends up with Joe being able to sort of grab all the rights and taking it and running with it. And I think that's the outcome he was looking for, you know. But the problem is that we don't really have a lot of documentation. You know, I'm a historian and I want to go down this rabbit hole. And the problem is this is like right before, you know, the Internet and digitization and keeping all your records and everything is there forever and ever. And so I just don't have a lot to go on. And trust me, I tried. I really was looking hard and didn't get much. OK, good. I didn't get much further than you did. The only thing there's this great Smithsonian oral history that Joseph P. Dot did that the way I understand it is that these two inventors, at least the allegation was, decided to con this guy, Joseph P. P. Dot out of some money. And they took the money. They spent a quarter of the money just on themselves. They spent another quarter of it building a product they didn't think was ever going to work. They were like, this is maybe a totally implausible, impossible idea. And then we're just going to, I guess, run away with the rest of it. But they end up running out of money at the end of this. And Allison, like you said, Joseph P. Dot ends up getting the product for himself. So this now becomes his product and he can start to work on it himself. A lot of effort for something that did not work out well for them. Yes. But this is the thing I think is so fun about this. This idea just won't quit. Right. Like there is this thing. This product doesn't work. It is. It's a it's a weird legal battle that you're in. But the idea of what if I could just clap to turn my lights off is so tantalizing to everybody. I mean, it's still just a brilliant idea. But, you know, I just want to like jump in. And, you know, I love that oral history. I also read the transcript. The problem with that oral history is that it is only one side of the conversation. Right. We have no idea what what the other folks thought. And that's the problem. And so, you know, Joe got to actually tell his story. You know, he sits down with the Smithsonian, gives his oral history and he's like, yeah, these people were scamming me. And there's like nothing we could do to be like, I don't know. Was he scamming them or was I driving them into bankruptcy? Like, you know, we don't have both sides of the story. That's very true. Yeah, he does end up winning. Yes. Whatever that looks like. But I do, I suspect, this is part of the reason I spent so much time in vain trying to figure this out because I do suspect there is more drama inside of that. I think there's a little bit more. Yeah. I mean, the drama of the clapper, it just goes so deep. This is what I'm saying. The lore of the clapper is so much weirder than anybody realized. First phrase. But again, there is just this thing. And Joseph P. Dot, again, the guy who made Chia Pet famous, They sold 25 million chia pets. Like, if he can do that, we have to trust this man's taste. He does hire engineers, you know. The first thing you have to do is hire some engineers. That's right. He hires this guy, Carlisle Stevens, who is an inventor, to come and make a better one. And Carlisle Stevens, as best I can tell, is the first person to call the clapper the crapper as a derogatory term, for which he deserves an enormous amount of credit. Kudos to Carlisle Stevens. But he sets out to build a better one. They end up getting a patent for a better one, basically trying to figure out how do we make this idea actually work without destroying appliances or being finicky. I would say he solved some of those problems, but not all of those problems. Yeah, right? This is not – the clapper they end up shipping is far from a perfect device, but at least it seems to mostly stop shorting people's television. Yeah, I mean it's best to not blow up your appliances. That's a good thing in a product that you're buying at the drugstore. Yeah, exactly. Also, a fun quasi-related Carlisle Stevens fact. He ends up patenting the idea that you could turn a light on and off by touching the base of the lamp. Oh. Extremely good idea by Carlisle Stevens. I had one of those lamps. It was like my favorite thing. This is what I'm saying. Guy knows how to turn lights on and off. Yeah. This is what he's doing. Damn. So, okay. So then they get to work. The Clapper patent, by the way, actually, I should just say, is a delight. It is fun to read. Yeah, Allison, I'm sure you read this too. But they have to sort of explain the problem they're trying to solve. Like the beginning is always very technical, sort of here is the thing that this describes. But then they have to sort of write the story of the problem. And I just want to read you a couple of really delightful excerpts. I love an exciting patent because most of them are not. Many people will elect not to use an electrical appliance such as a television or light if they must walk across a room to turn the television or light on. Thus, manufacturers have developed devices that remotely control and operate almost all electronic appliances. People is lazy is basically the outcome of this patent. You're not wrong. And I mean, and also like Allison, to these sort of cultural. Are you going to read the next sentence from that? Oh, yeah. Like, do you have that? Unfortunately. Because people are also lazy and really, like, bad with keeping up with remote controls. Yes. Yes. This is great. So the very next sentence. Unfortunately, most remotely controlled appliances require a person to possess some remote control unit to operate the appliance. People love remote controls. People also lose remote controls. It's the thesis behind the cover. I have AirTags in my remote controls, and I still can't find them. So problem as old as time. All right. Wait, sorry. I have one more bit of this patent I want to read to you. This is, again, the next sentence. This whole thing is just a brutal own of the American public. It says, the requirement of possession in itself can be a major inconvenience. Often a person must walk across a room to retrieve the remote control unit, and frequently it may be misplaced, which at best requires extra time and effort to find. I mean, have you seen some American houses? The rooms are big. They're real big. Walking across the room can be like trekking to Mordor. it's it's it's it's a struggle yeah and so this again this idea resonates like it it really you you can feel as bad about the fact that this is how people are as you want to but this is how people are like just the very beginning of the idea where people are like i want to watch television but i have to get up and walk across the room to turn on the tv maybe i just won't um is real it's a real thing like i think this is an experience people have now and the remote control is not that old at that time. You know, like remote controls are still new and they've already realized that this is like the major flaw in a remote control. You lose it. Yeah, exactly. And this is like the first time that people are having these kinds of wireless devices kind of all around their house in a bunch of different ways. And it turns out they solve some problems and cause a bunch of other ones. So anyway, this is the world into which the clapper is coming. And again, this idea just will not quit. There is something so exciting about this very basic convenience that just makes people want to get into it. But because this is Joseph P. Dot, fundamentally the thing that happens here is a marketing story. And this is where I think there is an argument to be made. Joseph P. Dot does an even better commercial jingle than the Chia Pet. Chia. Like, this is just a debate that we can have about which is a better commercial. But let me just play you. This is one of the early Clapper commercials, and you just need to see it. And when I say early Clapper commercials, they're all the same. So this just becomes the way Clapper commercials work. Because again, Joseph P. Dodd's thing is sheer repetition. I am going to burn this into your brain, and you will never forget it. Otherwise known as brainwashing. Yeah, that's exactly right. For two generations of kids, they never, ever, ever did forget it. Here it is. clap on clap off clap on clap off let you turn things on or off from anywhere in the room just plug in the clapper and a television lamp stereo almost anything you want to clap on and off the clapper is available adventure and participating Ace True Value and ServiceStar hardware Okay, I'm still going to give it to the Chia for like the actual like jingle, but the grandma just rolling over and clapping has been burned into my memory for like 20 years. Look at them, you know, generational appeal. Like they get everyone with it. But also, did you notice in that commercial that both the light and the TV went off? So they clearly were showing, hey, we fixed that problem. But also, I don't actually think that's how the clapper worked. No, that commercial may have been a lie. So actually, this is a good place to get into this. So the way the original clapper worked is, I would say, pretty much exactly the way you expect. You clap on, clap off. It is essentially just a microphone. It had two plugs and it's a microphone looking for sounds. They attempt to make it more complicated than that in its ability to like actually understand what you're doing and why. But basically all it is is it's a microphone, switches and a sound filter. The mic is always on. You plug it into the wall. So the mic is always on and the filter is essentially looking to the specific frequency of a clap, which has a noticeable sound frequency. It is not the only thing that has that sound frequency, which becomes a big part of the problem. But basically, it's this big frequency range in which you might be clapping. And they end up deciding, they do a bunch of testing to figure out that, okay, how do we make sure this works? Because if you just did one clap, any burst of noise will confuse this thing, right? And so you need something that feels deliberate, that somebody would have to do on purpose that doesn't just like accidentally happen in your house all the time. because they know that lots of noises are going on in your house, and we have to make sure it can pull those things out and just hear when you're trying to clap in front of the thing. So they decide it's going to be two claps, and it ends up being very important that it is two claps in a very specific sequence. Like one of the reasons they do the clap on, clap off, it's actually that's roughly the sequence that you're supposed to clap. Oh, you mean like clap on is the clap sequence. Oh, that's smart. Oh, there we go. If you hear the song, you do the claps. So there are, they basically, they have two switches and one switch is controlled with two claps. So if you clap twice, it'll turn the thing on and off in that switch. If you clap three times, which, fun fact, I think over time turned out to be way more predictable. Like two claps, I think, is much easier to have happen by accident. Three is much more likely to not get tripped and get lots of false positives. but three is the other one. So this ends up being the thing that they ship. And they ship it in a box with very specific instructions. And the instructions are, don't clap too hard. You don't have to clap too hard. You don't have to clap too loud. This can be easy. The timing is very important. The volume is not the thing. Really, all it's looking for is a burst of sound. And there are, that is a... Unless you put your sofa in front of the microphone and then it doesn't work and then you get to complain. Yes. This becomes a big problem for the clapper, which is that people's houses are not the same. And if you put this thing in somewhere sort of front and center and not near other sounds or other particularly, like you said, Allison, soft objects, it works. This thing will successfully work most of the time if in sort of ideal conditions. But it turns out, Allison, most people don't live in ideal conditions. And I think if I have this right, people almost immediately discover a million ways in which this can go wrong. Putting your sofa in front of the clapper, bad idea. It gets muffled. It doesn't work. Clapping too softly actually is a problem. So if you do it too quietly, it doesn't work, right? But the real problem is the timing. You know, it is a clap, clap, and it's about a half second in between. And if you clap too quickly or if there's too big a pause between your claps, it's not going to work. So you really have to get that rhythm. So, you know, it's like you have to go to cheerleading practice. Like, you know, you know, that meme about whether you clap on one and three and two and four and what is the right rhythm. Our country can't even agree if we're one and three clappers or two and four clappers. So it's tough. It's tough. Yeah. And so this ends up being a much more successful version of it. They solve a bunch of the problems. It doesn't break anybody's TV. They put this thing on sale. It costs $20, which was a lot more in the 80s and 90s than it is today, but is still like a relatively affordable technological object. I mean, for the convenience, absolutely. Totally. Still, my parents weren't buying it for me, so. Oh, mine wouldn't buy it for me either. I feel like every single time I come on Version History, I'm like, yeah, my parents wouldn't buy it for me because I really wanted it. And I wanted this one too. Let's quickly take a break and then we're going to come back and the clapper goes off to have a very strange life. There we go. We'll be right back. Are you a pet owner? Every six seconds a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill over a thousand dollars. Always an unwelcome surprise. That's where Fetch comes in. Fetch is the most complete pet insurance for dogs and cats. According to consumeradvocate.org, you get paid back up to 90% of vet bills at any vet in the U.S. and Canada, with claims paid back in as little as two days. Go to FetchPet.com slash save right now for your free quote. That's FetchPet.com slash save. one two three i'm stand-up comedian john marco cerezi and i'm actor penis model russell daniels the downside is our podcast where we bring on guests to talk about how miserable their lives are because let's face it things are not getting better every episode we talk about what's wrong with our lives our guests lives the world but in a fun way bottom line is you're gonna walk away feeling better about your life. We've had so many cool guests. Caleb Huron, Busy Phillips, Stavros Halkius, Laverne Cox, Hassan Piker, Alana Glazer. I promise you're going to have a good time. Now on the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is The Downside. All right, we're back. So a very fun piece of the research that I did here was to go and try to find all of the problems people had with things that would set off the clapper by accident. I would just like to present a few of them to you guys, if that's okay. Closing a door very loudly would often set off the clapper. Having a dog that barked. This, I would say, is the number one problem that people had, was barking dogs would set off the clapper. So a barking dog is the same frequency and rhythm as clap on, clap off. Or at the very least, close enough. There were a lot of false positives. Because, again, I think a fascinating thing about this is it's very important that this thing works when you want it to. Right. Like if you clap at it a bunch and it doesn't turn on, I think like just trying to psychoanalyze myself, that feels worse than false positives. Can you imagine just aggressively clapping at the thing just so it feels like you're applauding it, but you're just like, you stupid thing. Why won't you work? But also, like, what is your recourse if it's not working? Because you can't, like, go over there and turn it on now because it's now plugged into the special outlet. And so you'd have to, like, take it all apart and try again. So, you know, it's frustrating. Totally. And your dog is barking. Your dog is barking. So, V, you just injured yourself. I did. Which becomes a thing, actually. Yeah. There's a lawsuit. Yeah. You actually described this lawsuit. This is one of the funniest. It's not funny, but it is funny parts of this whole story. A woman says she clapped too hard and hurt her hands and files a lawsuit. And so this does feed into the narrative of ridiculous lawsuits that Americans like to file willy nilly. However, it did come right on the heels of the hot coffee from McDonald's lawsuit. So it gains traction in the broader media. And just to be clear, like the McDonald's lawsuit, that was like that was serious injury. The clapper lawsuit, not so much serious injury. So this is the thing. And even the explicit instructions in the box with the clapper are do not clap louder. That is not the solution to your problem. And yet, of course, you're you're just you're only human. Right. The thing doesn't hear you. You're like, how can I make it hear me? I'm going to do it louder. Do it louder. Clap louder. Even though it says don't clap louder. And so there are like lots and lots and lots of stories over time of people complaining that it is physically painful to use the clapper for one reason or another. Like this is a real complaint with this product, which is bizarre. Just to say they're wimps. Here we are. Exactly. Yeah. Builds character. But yeah, again, the timing is the key. And there was also a clever thing on the box. not all clappers had this but it particularly had at the beginning when it wasn't very accurate where it had three little lights on it that would start to light up when it started to register claps so it would it would hear a noise that it thought was a clap and one of the lights would go on and it would hear another one and then the second light would go on and it would do whatever it was supposed to do with the first switch and then if it heard a third one it would it would light up the second switch too so it's actually this useful little bit of dynamic feedback of knowing when it is and isn't actually registering that I think was a really smart. I mean, again, if you could see it, if it's not hidden behind your sofa. So, you know. Yeah. Which is and it's it's a bummer that this was the case, by the way, because, again, it's a big, ugly beige box that you're supposed to hang power cables from. Like, this is not a thing designed to be seen. It actually ought to be hidden. And and instead, the thing you have to do is put it somewhere in in perfect view. Open space. Right. But you couldn't put it next to your TV because one of the things that people complained about was they would be watching game shows and people would suddenly start cheering and that would set off the clapper. Oh, my God. There were some TVs and stereos that apparently made noises as they were operating that would activate the clapper. So it ends up needing this perfect sonic environment where there are no noises, but it is perfectly receptive to your noises. And that doesn't exist. This is not how people's homes actually are. I mean, that's still a problem today, right, with anything that's always on and always listening. Like you have the voice assistants. They constantly think you're talking to them when you're not. You have the AI wearables that are making up fan fiction about your life based on what they're hearing on TV, which is something that happened to me multiple times with these recording devices. So, you know, this is the start of all of that, and we still haven't solved it. So good on us. Indeed. Indeed. Allison, having looked into this, what's your sense of how successful a product this thing was in the early days? I actually had trouble figuring this out. It was a cultural phenomenon kind of from the beginning. Like the latent awareness of the clapper seemed to happen very fast. But it's hard for me to figure out if anybody was actually buying this thing in the early days. Yeah. In the early days, I don't have product figures, so I can't give you the actual numbers. However, it does seem like sales don't really take off until the 90s. So there is a lull period in the first couple of years before it gets on. But, you know, you're asking about success and, you know, we can judge success in so many different ways, like technologically success, questionable, like sales success. I mean, millions of these things have been sold for decades. Like you got to chalk up success there, like in the, you know, just massive amount of products sold. Like, so, you know, the fact that you can still buy them, like you can still get them and they're still part of this conversation that you're having an entire episode on this. Like, you know, like I have to I have to put that in the success category. I think I agree. Yeah. And it does seem like it took a little while to really start to catch on. Like, again, they started showing the commercials. People knew what it was. But it burbled along for a little while and they spruced up the product a little bit and then it really started to take off. One fascinating use of the Clapper, by the way, that I have not talked about is it had this thing called away mode. And they also pitched the Clapper a little bit as a security system that if you if you put it on to away mode, it would turn all of its connected stuff on the minute it heard any noise at all. So the idea is like you're going to have you know, you're going to be gone and you want to deter an intruder. So if it hears a door open, it'll turn on the light and the TV and that'll make them think somebody else is home and they'll be gone. At the same time, I think we all assume our burglars are really dumb. Yes. This is one of the pieces of feedback they get on this even in the early days of like this is not actually solving any problems for anybody. I open the door and suddenly the television turns on. That's actually not a thing. And also the clapper folks at the beginning of this have to explicitly say again in the instructions that you are not to plug in anything heat generating to this. Oh, no. Because there's a world in which you almost look at this as like a prototypical smart plug. That's like, what if I could wake up in the morning and this is another sort of dream since time immemorial. Have my coffee start brewing for me while I'm still in bed. Perfect. Great. Love it. Awesome idea. Should have been a great use for the clapper. so many possibilities for disaster in that particular case. Especially when we don't have the auto turnoff yet. Right. Yeah. And so they're at this point of like, OK, you cannot plug in anything that generates heat while you're doing this, which means no temperature controlling devices. It means no turning on the oven. It means no coffee makers. It really you boil this thing down and it's just it's lights like it's the only the only good, safe, correct use of this is lights. Except for maybe the halogen lamps that were also really popular then and also like to catch on fire. Oh, my God. So I think this starts to be just a completely doomed idea. Right. And I think the sort of next turn of this story is that they try pretty heroically to build a better one. Seriously, like in the 90s, they build a thing called the Clapper Plus, which ships with Allison a remote control because we're just given up. We don't need to go back and know our own company history. We don't need to read those original patents. No, no, no. Let's just have a remote control. Oh, my God. Wait, wait. So the remote control controlled the clapper? Correct. Okay. Yeah. Listen, all of the reasons you don't think this makes sense are exactly correct. Okay. But if you think about it, like, again, one of the reasons I love the clapper is it is such a good idea until you think about it for one second. Also. Yeah, you laughing turned it on. Oh. People should know that. Feel however you want about that. But it is a good, clever idea in a vacuum that turns out to be just completely incompatible with people's actual lives. One of the things they discover actually in the road to developing remote control is that one of the people for whom the clapper is most honestly useful is elderly people. It's, you know, the grandma on the commercial is a real use case for this. People who can't get up to go turn off the lights. Like this ends up being a sort of powerful use case for smart home stuff in general. Like it's accessibility use is really important. Really remarkable how so much of the smart home narrative today, like, is kind of encapsulated in this one device that didn't work. And now we have devices that basically do what it was proposing to do, but in a smarter way, like kind of. Because there's still the same problems with the false positives. And, you know, well, now we have a new one with your Wi-Fi going out. But I'm still like thinking about the fact that, you know, before we were adding Plus to every single streaming service, we had the Clapper Plus. And the concept of having a remote to control the thing that you bought to get rid of your remotes. This is what we do. This is what we do. That is the cycle of technology. You just described it. Yeah. Basically, we forget everything. We forget everything that we've ever learned. So we're just like, let's try it again. Yeah. But this group of people, the elderly users, also not into the idea of spending a lot of their time loudly clapping for a variety of reasons. Right. So so the idea of having a remote control to essentially control a smart plug in the wall works. Makes sense. Like I would like to be able to easily with a button turn off my light from across the room is maybe the most directionally correct idea the clapper ever had, which is very fun. And so so they end up they start working on these things. They add surge protection so that if something happens to one of your devices or if something happens in your house, it won't all fry and fall apart. They add more outlets. They let you train different kinds of claps to different kinds of things. They develop sort of more complicated macros. So, again, there's like if you just take the very nuggets of these ideas, they're kind of right. They are. Oh, do we want we want routines? We want scenes. We want macros. We want it. We want to be able to do more stuff from more places. It's like it's all right there. They just had this fundamentally wrong idea that we should be starting with an acoustic switch that you control by clapping. Could you just imagine like trying to like do a series of commands and having to clap all in different rhythms and patterns and just. You like Morse code your way through all of your commands. Just or just like Flamenco. What's the dance where you're just clapping all the time? You know, it's like, oh, let me start the coffee maker. Yeah Yeah I mean like the problem is that they working with the technology they have at the time And we don have what like it just not there yet right You know we so close Like, the timing is so close. And it's just not there. I know. This is actually one of the fun sliding doors moments of when this thing came to be. That is, like, if you even start developing this 10 years later, you probably do it completely differently. And it ends up being a really different kind of product. But I also wonder, and this is just a thing I've been thinking about a lot in the research of this. If it hadn't been clapping, would it have been as novel and as cool? Like if they had just marketed this thing as a smart switch with a remote, turn off your lights from across the room, but you don't clap, does it have any of the cultural staying power that it does? Allison, what do you think? Absolutely not. I think the clapping is fundamental to the clapper. I'm sorry. I think like, yeah, the interaction, like, you know, it has you doing something and you are, you know, through your own bodily control, you know, channeling the lights. So yeah, no, I think you had to have the clap. Like if it's just another remote control that you're going to lose, like why? You know, like, I don't think it would, like, no, no, the clapping, it's important. And I think it had to be clapping. I don't think it could be something else. Like, imagine having to do it with whistling. There are way too many frequencies of whistling. Some people can't even whistle. Yeah. So and then imagine the dogs. Like, it'd be terrible. Oh, geez. Yeah. So, yeah. No, I think it has to be clapping. I'm on board with clapping. Vy, what do you think? Um, I think, I don't know, I'm kind of mixed on my opinion there, because I do think that the idea of just having a remote to turn off the light, there are, there's a subsect of like, tech dads who have existed since time immemorial who would have been like, Oh, look, honey, more buttons, and would have been totally into it. But I do think there's something universal about clapping. It doesn't matter what language you speak, you know how to clap. and just the jingles of the time and the fact that I remember, like when we were talking about this episode, I didn't remember the name of the device, but someone was like, it's the thing where you clap and lights turn on. And I was like, oh, like core memory unlocked. So I do think that the clapping, it has like a rhythmic, like acoustic, it's kind of like a hook in a music song where it's really catchy, where it gets stuck in your head. So I don't know. Maybe Joseph P. Dot could have come up with a jingle for the remote light. I believe in him. He could probably figure it out. But the clapping, I think, is pretty, pretty iconic. I just keep trying to imagine the commercial without the clapping. And it just doesn't. I just feel like there's no way to make it hit as hard. Well, I don't know if it was still called the Great American Turn On. Maybe I can imagine that commercial, right? Like, just imagine that one going on. Yeah. Turn off America. that was perfect i changed my mind that was it we did it uh the great american turn on i think would have been very successful in the united states but would have had a lot of very confused buyers for what was going on here um but no i think like there were a lot of different things that they tried on this they at one point made a little metal device that would talk to it they called it the cricket uh and it would basically make chirping sounds that were designed very specifically to hit the tuning on the box in order to activate the clapper. So instead of clapping or yelling or pressing a button, you could just do like a synthetic chirp to get it to work. They tried all kinds of things to make this thing more accurate. They're basically dog training your clapper. Yeah, that's exactly right. It's like clicker training. And they obviously have never interacted like with little kids. Like, do you know how horrible that would be with everybody like all of their clickers like i feel like like pets are the greatest foe of the clapper and even with this this chirpy thing do you know how triggered my cat pd would be hearing that thing he would just go you you he just hears the thing he goes and then he's like in murder mode so the clapper would be killed by baby sort of a you know default state for most cats so yeah That's exactly right. I mean, can you tell I love dogs? My dog would also not be psyched about this, to be fair. But this is the thing throughout this whole process I've been just like obsessively trying to figure out is if it hadn't been clapping. Like what if clapping is the only thing they were wrong about, right? That a bunch of the other stuff eventually came true essentially the way the clapper imagined it. That wouldn't it be great if I could turn off my lights without going across the room? Wouldn't it be great if I had sort of different cadences to control different things? What if all of my house could be a little bit smarter in this way? This dream is not dead. We've all learned to set up weird Alexa routines to make this stuff happen with our lights. People are buying incredibly expensive smart lights just to do this thing. There are a lot of smart home experts who will tell you, like, screw all the rest of that just by smart plugs that turn things on and off, and you'll be amazed at how much better your life becomes. So it's like maybe the clapper had all of this right except the clapping. But then I think, Allison, like you said, I come back to this point where it's like if it didn't clap, it wouldn't have been as fun. And the fact that it kind of didn't work very well would have ruined it in a way that it didn't because the clapping was so fun. I mean, you would have had to have much better technology. Like the technology would have had to actually work. Right. Like if it wasn't going to be fun, it had to work. Yeah. And I think at that time there was probably no way to make the technology work. But also with clapping, it works just enough amounts of times that you could say, well, like it sometimes works. Yeah. Which kind of gives it like a legitimacy that I think the other stuff it just wouldn't have. So I think it has to be clapping. I mean, which also like it plays into the novelty aspect of it, right? Because it works just enough and it is a novelty and then it becomes a gift. And then they, you know, decide that they are going to make all different novelty style. like clapper. So you can get a clapper in like any kind of like superhero cartoon, you know, any kind of cultural moment, like the clapper. They're like, we're on that. Yeah. I think novelty, Alison, I think is exactly the right word. And it's why I think the fact that this is a Joseph P dot product is the thing, right? Like this is not a tech company in the eighties. This is not Sony or RCA or, you know, somebody like that trying to pull this thing off. They're not selling it in Radio Shack. No, he's also like hawking the garden weasel. Right, right. And they end up making the of glove. This is the most silly as seen on TV kind of stuff that you can find. Even the box is this very kitschy, fun, extremely 80s thing that is not in any way a tech product, which I think is so fascinating. It's in a certain way really high tech and yet in no way is it actually sort of considered or marketed or sold as a tech product, which I just think is really interesting. And there's not a lot of things out there quite like that. But they do continue to try to make better clappers. There was a Bob Ross clapper. I love that. That would say things to you. Like there's a lot of clappers still out there, but they make them work better. I think over time they actually got to the point where they were like substantially better. They're pretty reliable. Yeah. Like, I don't think you can't fix this problem completely just because there are other things that sound like claps in the world, but they got much better over time. But the problem was right about the time they started to get better, better technology seemed like it just started to completely leave it behind. Right, Allison? Is that like, is that a fair characterization? 100%. Okay. What left it behind? So many different things. Well, first off, like, internet and Wi-Fi came along, and like, then we changed that. But also things like fluorescent light bulbs came along, and the clapper is not compatible with fluorescent light bulbs. And so, you know, and then you end up with televisions that are always on, and you then are using the remote for, you know, changing channels and things like that. And so suddenly the technology of your other appliances has outstripped just the technology of your, you know, your electrical socket. And so, you know, yeah, it kind of goes wrong in all of the ways it could go wrong. That's actually a really good and I think important piece of this that I had not really thought about until I started doing this research. That there was a long time that the only power state most of your devices had was plugged or unplugged. If you plugged it in, it was on. And to turn it off, you unplugged it. And that is how many things worked for a very long time. Now, the only thing I can think of that I own that works like that is my George Foreman grill. I have a like decades old V just turned it on by laughing again. This is the greatest thing that's ever happened to me. I have a very old George Foreman grill and it literally it has no power switch. It has no states. You plug it in and it's on and then you unplug it and it's off. And for a long time, that's how electronics largely worked. But then, like you're saying, Allison, we got to the point where your TV could be plugged in and off. And what it's actually doing is going into an essentially powerless, but not all the way powerless state so that it can do things like turn on faster. Vampire mode. Vampire mode. Exactly. Well, it's sucking out your electricity. Right. And so so many other devices work like that. And the way the clapper worked was by just cutting power to the thing. So the whole sort of foundational idea of this just kind of falls apart right as the technology for it to work actually becomes sort of useful. and yet people keep buying clappers. This is the thing. Our story ends in the most fun place. So Joseph P.Dott sells the company in 2018. He died in 2023. He was in his 90s. He had a good long life. He was a philanthropist. Truly fascinating guy. I encourage everybody to go spend a few minutes reading about Joseph P.Dott. Good guy. He's a really good guy. Yeah, he had a super hard childhood and turned into a good guy who took care of a lot of people. So very cool story. But you can still today in 2026 buy a clapper. You can go on Amazon and you can buy a Mandalorian and Grogu themed clapper. You can buy a Darth Vader clapper. Like this thing persists. Seems like a very specific subset of people who are wanting this. You can tell. It's true. Who are the people who want that? What universe are they in? I don't know. I want the Bob Ross one. I want to clap and have him go, happy little trees, and then go to bed. That's what I want. Sure. But OK, but here's my thing. Every bit of the novelty of that can be achieved a thousand other ways. And I'm not pretending these are like hugely successful. Nobody is comparing the sales of the C-3PO clapper to like an Amazon Echo speaker. Right. But but these things are still out there and people are still buying them. And you can go on Amazon and you can buy new ones that have recent reviews. Like there are humans in the world buying these things. How much do they cost now? We also have this is, I think, the most modern version of the Clapper. You can currently buy it on Amazon for $23.99. This just looks like a smart plug. That does look like a smart plug. Price has not changed. I know. It's kind of amazing. This is, it has, it's a beige box. It has the three indicator lights and it lets you plug two things into it. Like this is the original Clapper in a different box. It has four stars on Amazon and it has 14,825 ratings. People are still buying these things. Allison, why are people still buying these things? They really care about it. They care about it. I mean, why do we buy anything? Like, I mean, it's going to make our life easier, right? But this is the thing. Is this just a pure nostalgia play at this point? Like it's a funny thing to buy for your parents at Christmas that they'll remember from the 80s? Is that all this is now? I don't think so. I don't think, you know, not the one that you're holding in your hand, V. Like, that's just too, like, utilitarian. But like, you know, people buy things for all sorts of reasons. Right. And we can't even imagine what is it that, you know, they want to turn on and off by their clapping that that necessitates. And, you know, it's filling that gap. And who are we to judge those 14000 people out there who are reviewing clappers today? fair it's a nice way to think about it there are a bunch of people who seem to buy these things for christmas uh as a as a way to sort of goofily manage your holiday decorations uh a lot of people seem to like plugging their holiday lights into a clapper uh and and you can you can just be like you can be like i let there be light clap clap because i don't want it to turn on but yeah no i think there is something there because when i was at ces this year i saw i I think might be the next evolution of the clapper, but there's no sound involved. It was these people who, with a smartwatch type device, would let you just wave at your devices and turn them on. So you could feel like a Jedi just going like, turn on, turn off. And to your point about the audience who wants these novelty clappers based on the themes that we're seeing, maybe it's just people who want to feel like a Jedi in real life. Yeah. I mean, the force is well within them. And it's actually not important that it works all the time because it's super rad when it does. Yeah. And that counts for something. All right, let's take one more break and then we're going to come back and we're going to do the version history questions to figure out the legacy once and for all of the Clapper. We'll be right back. There's a civil war happening in the Democratic Party. And if there's one place that that's playing out most clearly, it's in Michigan. A crucial Senate primary battle in Michigan that could determine control of Congress in November. Congresswoman Haley Stevens and Abdul El-Sayed. A progressive Democrat and a moderate Democrat. In the end, it all comes down to the dreaded E-word, electability. But in Michigan, one candidate is trying to turn the electability concept on its head. If we think that voters walk around asking, where do I sit on some theoretical left-right spectrum? Then in theory, the bulk of the voters are somewhere in the middle. The problem, though, is that that model hasn't really accurately predicted our politics for a very long time. If Michiganders wanted moderate, why would they have elected Donald Trump twice? Dr. Abdul El-Sayed is making the progressive case for America first. And he's trying to settle the Democrats' ideological battle in the process. This is about the many versus the money. I'm Estet Herndon, and this is America Actually. Catch us every Saturday on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts. Every body is beautiful, yet society is so obsessed with thinness that it has become a proven financial asset and there's a $300 billion and growing weight loss industry. If it literally pays to be thinner, are GLP-1s actually a worthwhile financial investment? I'm Vivian Tu, your Rich BFF, and on this episode of Net Worth and Chill, we're diving into the thinness economy, its tangible effects on your income, and the impact GLP-1s are having on our everyday lives. No, you don't need to change yourself to be amazing. But yes, you might make more money if you do. Oof. Listen wherever you get your podcasts and watch on YouTube.com slash yourrichbff. All right, we're back. It's time now for the version history questions. That, me saying we're back, just turned on the clapper. We're doing great, everybody. There we go. The eight questions that we ask about every product to try and determine its legacy. The first question is, where does this product fit on the time matrix? The time matrix, a very straightforward concept everyone understands. Was it the right idea at the right time? Was it the wrong idea at the wrong time or somewhere in between? Allison, you may have just teased to us that you have a very complicated answer to this question. I would love to hear it. I was going to say, yeah, well, I mean, time is so much longer than a pinpoint. And so and this product has been around for, you know, 40 plus years. So it should really be a graph, not a dot in time, but 100 percent right idea. and I actually think it's right time in its play scene. Yes, I would put it there. But then, you know, as time continues, so you have to make your graph dimensional here, add in a third dimension. It slopes, it's always the right idea and then it falls out of time. Okay, so you think it's the right idea the whole time and at first it's the right time and then it's the wrong time. Correct. Interesting. See, my immediate response to this is wrong idea, wrong time. This thing is like a total whiff on everything that it's actually trying to do. But this is where, like, Allison, you said the word novelty, and now I can't get it out of my head, right? Like, this thing as a silly, fun thing to have in your house was great. And everything about it was actually executed correctly if that's the direction you're going. If you're trying to make this a successful precursor to the smart home, they whiffed, right? Like every important thing they tried to do, they did wrong. And so I guess in that sense, like maybe it is the right idea, just bad execution. I just think it's the right idea at the wrong time. You think it's the right idea at the wrong time? The idea has persisted for 40 years. We want to hope forever that you could just do the thing and have the lights turn off. This is like an innate human desire for, I think, until we no longer have electricity and we go back to a post-apocalyptic world where there is no electricity. So I think it's for, I agree with Allison that it's forever the right idea. But like, there's just never the right time. Never the right time. It's never the right time for it. Except maybe in the week before Christmas, where dads everywhere just want to clap and say, let there be light. That's the only time. So I think to Allison's point, we need a third dimension. And for one week every year, right before Christmas, it is the right idea at the right time. But every other time it's the right idea at the wrong time. Because it's never the right time for this thing. Except for that one week. I'm willing to give it right idea, wrong time with a Christmas asterisk right next to it That works for me Yeah I think that right And I think this launched this came out so far before anybody was doing really actually high-tech smart home stuff that I'm inclined to give it more credit than most because it's not like it missed some other thing that it should have caught in 1985. It's just that the thing it tried to do didn't work and never, ever, ever, ever was going to. No. 40 years later, we have invented all of the technology you would need to make this work. And yet, it sure doesn't. We still have a latest model. That's good stuff. All right. I think we're going to go right idea, wrong time. You guys have talked me into it. But Allison, please know that your love for where it was at the beginning is no good. Okay. Thank you. All right. Question number two. Was this peak anything? Advertising. Peak advertising. I was going to say, peak as seen on TV. That was my first one, too. Yeah, no, absolutely. I mean, it's also like that gets back to the right time because it is a time when actually advertising could reach everybody at the same time because we only had three to five channels, depending on when you are. So everybody saw this commercial. Now no one sees any of the same commercials. That's such a good point. And this was kind of right at the end of that era, right? Like cable and stuff start to grow up right then. Yeah, it's right as like cable's coming on. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's interesting. So this is sort of the last chance you ever have to brain worm people in this particular way by beating a commercial and a jingle over their head. Unless you put it on TikTok now. It's just a different QVC channel where I can just imagine someone doing a TikTok dance with the clapper. Can you imagine that? Could you do that dance for us right now, V? It's just it's probably, you know, it's the it's the Charlie XC songs dance with the clapping. Oh, that's good. With the apple dance. That's the clapper TikTok dance. To everybody watching and listening to this, please make a clapper TikTok dance. Share it on TikTok. And if this becomes a thing, we will make V do it on our TikTok. I'm a terrible dancer, but I'll do it. Was this peak clapping? Was this the coolest clapping ever was? I feel good about it. Peak novelty. Peak novelty. Not bad. Ooh, that one's hard. There's a lot of novelty out there. Is this peak novelty? I honestly, I think even the Chia Pet is probably more peak novelty than... I see. Joseph P. Dot might have been peak novelty. He was. Did you guys have anything else? Peak anything? Laziness? Oh, peak laziness is a high bar, Allison. That's a lot of... Have we gotten less lazy since the 80s? I mean, we still want this product, so... That is true. I had a real moment in researching this where I was like, this seems good. Maybe I should get one of these. I've been fighting that feeling this entire pod. I was like, do I want one of these? Because, you know, I got the smart lights. I got them on a routine. You know the answer is yes. It's only $23 on Amazon. Also, one thing this has going for it that – and actually, well, I'm going to – we're going to – we'll get to this in a second. But I have a very clear answer to the question number five, what feature of this thing should every current version have. Actually, let's just do this out of order. This is the next question, and I'll answer this first, is what feature of this thing should every current version have? And my answer is one very simple, common knowledge way to turn something off. Like right now, if you have a smart home, your smart home is utterly unknowable to anyone other than you, including possibly your spouse, including anyone who doesn't live at your house that comes over. the you have to have named your lamps things so that people can address them directly and turn them off. And the idea that I am sitting on your couch and I want to turn the lights off and I actually know how to do it because all I have to do is clap twice. That didn't work is a very good and powerful and correct smart home control that I think to me is one of the reasons this is so enticing is it's not you don't have to set anything up. You don't have to learn a new behavior. You don't have to remember how it works. You just didn't work again that time either. Clapper's doing great, everybody. That's your point. That to me is actually one of the things that is so enticing about this. It's like you already know how to use it in a way that doesn't exist with most smart home technology. A universal turnoff is something that I do want because I have existed for the last two years. I bought my first home with my spouse and it has been a two year cold war about how we control our lights. I use voice control and I've taped washi tape over all the manual switches because if he touches those those switches, my voice control is not going to work. And it's an argument every single day because they're like, why? Let me show you how to do a shortcut on your phone. And it's much easier to control it that way. So he just walks over and just turns off the light. No, we don't touch. It's a whole argument. I wrote about it for TheVerge.com about how smartifying my home turned into a cold war over lights and it persists two years later. So I would I would love I would love a universal just clap clap every night and all the lights turn off. But all on, all off, that seems like a really easy way to turn things off. Yes. Yeah. And instead, we've just vastly overcomplicated everything. I guess the flip side is that it works more often when you do those things. But people don't know how to do them. Allison, what's your answer? What feature of this thing should every current version have? What should we steal from the clapper for 2026? I think it needs to work. Like, oh, no, I did it again. Again, the feature just needs to be work. It's a good idea. I support this. It's a crazy idea, but I like it. I also appreciate the indicator lights that sort of tell you when a thing is listening to you and aware and working. There's also not enough of that in the smart home. There's a lot of shouting at things and hoping it registers. Me every day. Yeah, and things just sort of silently fail all the time. The clapper at least tells you it can't hear you because nothing happens. Okay, going back to the other questions. If you could time travel back and develop it yourself, could you make the product more successful? No. No. I think it's a fixed point in time. You know, like with all the time travel theories, there's just like an immovable point that can't be changed. I feel like this is just a fixed. There's nothing I could do besides making it work. Well, so this is what I was going to ask is, do you go back and tell Joseph P.Dot, don't even try with this. It's never going to work. This is a doomed product. No, no, no, no. Because it's not doomed. It's a success, right? Again, millions and millions sold. I mean, except for not working, it's a success. No, I'm with V that this is a fixed point in time. I'm all about the time travel and you are correct. There's nothing you can do. However, you know, I am a historian and what I would like to do to maybe not make the product better, but to make the story better is like just like say, OK, let me set up your personal archive here so that we will have all the right documentation to do this. And, you know, this is something I think about like all the time right now, because, you know, historians are always trying to be like, oh, what do we what could we save today that will be useful in the future? and, you know, we were always having to judge, you know, this is like the challenge of archivists, right? Because, you know, you can't save everything. You need to just like keep it, right? And so, you know, there's so many people who I want to just be like, hey, Hudson Williams and Connor Story, let me set up your personal archives so you know how your biography is going to be written in 50 years. So, you know, that's what I would like to do. This thing is preventing me from laughing. I really, Allison, it makes me incredibly happy that if we invent time travel, you're going to go back and just tell people to take more notes about themselves. That's very heartwarming. I love that for you. I mean, I'm just going to be like, these are the things that you need to save. All this other stuff, let it go. But this, this is what you need. I mean, if you want your story told the way you want it told, let's be clear. Yeah. Yeah, I buy it. I think I tend to agree that there is there's not a thing we could have told him that he didn't already know. Right. Because the the fact of it not working great, abundantly clear to everybody, including him at the very beginning. I mean, at the very he bought a faulty product. Exactly. Knowing that it was the first thing he did was like hire engineers and say, make this better. Like he knew that this was a terrible product. Totally. And then also he's like, and I'm going to sell it. Right. It's like no qualms at all about that. No, none. Just didn't even care. Yeah, I'm glad that he becomes a great philanthropist because otherwise you're just knowingly selling terrible things. He could have used his powers for evil. Oh, absolutely. That is definitely true. Yeah, it's good that he turned all of his ad magic to funny things that people had in their houses and not something more nefarious. Yeah, I kind of wonder if you go back and you're like, Joseph, don't even worry about trying to make this thing better. You're going to spend a lot of time over the next 20 years trying to improve this product. Don't worry about it. It's never going to get there. Just keep selling this. Make more commercials. It's going to be fine. All right, next question. Question number four, will the youth ever make it cool again? Allison, do you think there's a nostalgic rebirth in store for the Clapper? I would like question, was it ever cool? and who is making it cool. And yes, like the question is if it's ever been there. And if not, like it's where it is. It's in the land of kitsch and it will always remain in the land of kitsch. TikTok dance. I'm just saying, make the clapper cool TikTok challenge. I'll do it. I'll do it. It is like the horror show of a TikTok dance meets the flamenco to get a clapper on and off is really an idea whose time has come. I'm pretty excited about it. All right. We have three questions left. These are the Virgin History Hall of Fame questions. A product has to meet all three of these criteria. It has to pass all three of these tests to get into the Virgin History Hall of Fame. Question number one, did this product do something truly new? Allison, what do you think? I've been thinking about this ever since you sent me these questions. And I'm like, I'm going to say yes. It got people thinking, like when I say people, I mean all of America thinking about the, possibility of home automation. And like, I think that is a big start. So yes. That's a good answer. Yeah. I think the clapper in sort of history is sort of fascinating in that sense that the idea of home automation was not new, but it was like wonky and complicated and not in most people's minds. And I think you're right that this is probably the first time anything home automation, smart homey felt plausible to most people and like something that might actually end in your home. And that's a big deal. So I agree. V, thoughts? It did because people were clapping at their lights. So that was new. No time in history before were people clapping at their lights. So yeah. I mean, I don't know, like the invention of the light bulb, they may have been like, whoa wait no no longer candles good job okay besides that point where people went oh electricity clap clap clap which is arguably for electricity not the light um at no other point before the clapper has anyone gone like oh clap clap so you don't think thomas edison was sitting there in his in his lab going why is nothing happening no there we go i'm telling you it's the cadence clap off okay yeah you got it down now all right so it passes the first test uh hall of fame question number two was it either remarkably good or remarkably bad it was so remarkably bad that it became remarkably good i'm with you on that being like it is like it has always been bad it's continues to be bad it's fundamentally bad because it does not work it breaks the number one rule of any gadget or product, which is to do the thing that you're supposed to do the majority of the time. But it's just funny. All right. So it passes that test, too. Good Lord, are we close to putting this thing in the Hall of Fame. But I will warn you both, it's going to fail this test. Hall of Fame question number three. Did the Clapper change history? Is there a world before the Clapper and a world after the Clapper? I mean, the idea is the answer to this one. No, I hate to just be honest about it. The answer is no. No, no, no. Ron, Ron. Nope. It's 100% changed history. And that's where you have to go to the patent record. And if you look at the number of patents that cite the clapper, there's like 113 of them. And Apple cites the clapper when it is developing Siri. So, yes, absolutely changed history. Siri, another famous technological innovation that we all know and love for working. Yeah. Yeah, we're really good at technology that works on that front. So that's the Clapper's true legacy is it gave us generations upon generations of products that didn't really work. It gave us generation upon generations of product where the idea is so good and tantalizing that you want it, but you just can't make it real. Well, I mean, it gives us the optimism that it's going to work one day. It is going to work. Come on. I mean, we're basically saying its lasting impact is false hope. But I mean, like if it passes all three of these questions, which I think is so intrinsic to the clapper, it does so by accident. It's not doing it from any point of intent. It's just accidentally it falls and trips and somehow claps its way in. It's not doing so like with a resounding problem. I know what I'm saying. It's a problem. It won't be the only time this ever happens. But, Allison, here is my argument against. And I think the reason I don't think it makes it is because if this thing belonged in the Virgin History Hall of Fame, it would have started some kind of phenomenon. It would have been – there would have been something better like it that came out a few years later because we figured out something new and somebody would have – But it's like what actually happened is this thing was silly and funny for 15 years. And then we started doing the smart home. And so I just I don't know. I don't feel like like did this bend the universe a little bit? Like I just feel like the answer is no. It was so fun and lovely. Did it have lasting impact? It is still being sold. You can still buy it. I mean, lasting impact for something that does not work. Like, I mean, how many things that don't work, you know, can be sold for that length of time and have that many Amazon? This is a closer argument than I anticipated. My initial instinct was no. I don't know. Alice is making a really compelling argument. But like I said, if it gets in, it's tripped and fallen its way in. Oh, without question. Again, but that's not a problem, right? like all of history is like that. How many different products are like should be in a Hall of Fame because like, you know, it was a mistake. I mean, we've got penicillin and post-it notes. Like those are both mistakes. I think you're the big three inventions in history. Penicillin, post-it notes, the clapper. I think you're like most compelling argument is that its patent is actually cited by things that like I think that's the most compelling argument for it having. an impact, but... But that's because this patent is hilariously general. It's like, what if it could hear things and do things? Okay, fair. Fair. I have never done this in the history of this show yet, but Allison, you make an incredibly good case and I think you're probably right, but also, this thing cannot make it into the Virgin History Hall of Fame. I'm so sorry. It just... It can't. I have... We cannot... Your reviews are going to tank here. All of those Clapper users are going to come back and haunt you on TikTok and be like, no, you are wrong. I look forward to my professional legacy being I am the wet blanket who ruined the clapper for everybody. It's fine. It'll go hand in hand with the viral sensation that is the clapper TikTok challenge dance that I will humiliate myself on the internet. When that becomes the biggest thing in the history of the internet, we'll put it into the Hall of Fame. So that's what we need. We are one viral TikTok challenge away. Sounds like vindication is just like one TikTok away. I agree. All right. This feels good. I accept these terms. All right. Thank you both for being here. This has been so much fun. What a deeply bizarre thing we got to spend this time talking about. But thank you both so much for being here. This is incredibly fun. Allison, super grateful for your time. Thank you for being here. You're welcome. It's been fun. All right. If you want to yell at me about my decision to unilaterally keep this thing out of the Virgin History Hall of Fame, if you agree with Allison, if you have thoughts, you can always call the call the hotline 866-VERGE11. Send us emails. Yell at V on social about dances that she should do. And the best way to support everything that we do here at The Verge is to subscribe. Theverge.com slash subscribe. Read Allison's column at IEEE Spectrum. It's excellent and full of good Virgin history stuff. Thank you so much for watching and listening. We will see you next time. and to support everything that we do here at The Verge and get access to ad-free podcasts, including this one, subscribe to The Verge.