EUGENE POLLEY, an electronics engineer who invented the wireless TV remote control, a gadget that also featured the first mute function to silence the more obnoxious sounds of television, has died. He was 96.

Polley lived his entire life in the Chicago area, where he worked for Zenith Electronics for 47 years. Hired as a stock boy during the Depression, he eventually became an engineer with 18 patents to his credit.

Cutting-edge ... an advertisement for the Flash-Matic.

His most important innovation was the Flash-Matic, a ray-gun remote control first sold in 1955 just as television sets were becoming commonplace in American households. Within decades, a television could be found in practically every home - and in some cases in every room. Nearly every set had a remote to go with it.

''It makes me think maybe my life wasn't wasted,'' Polley once told The Baltimore Sun. ''Maybe I did something for humanity - like the guy who invented the flush toilet.''