Apple's co-founder left and created a bizarre gadget you've probably never heard of that was decades ahead of its time

Steve Wozniak is best known for being the co-founder of Apple, but after leaving the company in the mid 1980s, he went on to create a little-known gadget.

Wozniak was introduced to Steve Jobs while he was at college, and the pair went on to found Apple alongside Ronald Wayne. 

Wozniak parted ways with Apple in 1985, and founded a new company called CL 9 and launched a gadget that was way ahead of its time. 

Almost 40 years on, the CL 9 Core – as it was known – has largely been forgotten, but it did earn itself a spot in the Guinness World Records.

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Steve Wozniak invented a very different sort of device after leaving Apple

Wonziak was an electrical engineer and inventor, and leaving Apple gave him a chance to focus on a new project. 

In 1985, the same year he parted ways with the tech giant, he set up CL 9 and spent the next two years developing a universal remote control called the CL 9 Core.

While TV remote controls weren’t exactly cutting-edge tech by 1987, the CL 9 Core brought something new and was way ahead of its time. 

It was the world’s first programmable remote control, and it even has the Guinness World Record to prove it. 

The CL 9 Core meant that rather than having to use a bunch of different remotes for your TV, VCR, etc, you could use just one that worked across them all. 

It also looked more modern than the typical remote controls you’d see at the time, with an LCD screen and 16 large keys. 

But it was also pretty complicated.

YouTuber and tech expert Linus Tech Tips recently managed to get his hands on one of the retro remote controllers and pointed out that it came with a 100-page manual. 

The remote itself also had a 16-page interface, with each page able to store up to 16 different commands or 16 sequences of commands. 

For example, you could set it up so that hitting one button turns on your TV, fires up the popcorn machine, and automatically dims your lights, which was groundbreaking stuff back in 1987.

Although it was years ahead of its time, the gadget failed to catch on

Sadly, it seems that the CL 9 Core’s complexity could have contributed to its downfall. 

Its Guinness World Record page notes that the commercial failure of the gadget has been attributed to ‘the level of programming required to make it function’. 

Alongside that, most folks were used to having to use more than one remote control, so sadly, the poor Core never caught on. 

A year after the remote control was launched, Steve Wozniak sold the company and made the somewhat unlikely move into teaching. 

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