Heck yeah folded piece of cardboard wedged into the dial to get those "in-between" signals back when I was a stupid kid who knew nothing about calibrating the VFO...

I am still quite fond of the early "clicker" style remotes that used no batteries and worked by audio impulse and later used inaudible ultrasonics. I think it would be fun to revive the control scheme for a modern hobby project.

Edit: someone did it! https://www.hackster.io/news/control-alexa-with-an-old-schoo...

My grandparents' dog would change the channels when he scratched himself and his dog tags would ring at the right frequency.

My grandparents had a Zenith console TV that had a remote control that used ultrasonic tuning forks. [0] The tuner had presets and some sort of stepper or solenoid driving it. Hit the channel up button, and CLACK! thump-thump-thump you'd go to your next preset. You could make the TV do random things by jingling keys or coins.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Adler#Contributions_to_...

SpaceCommander remote control owner here. This brown (gold lettering and highlights) unit sits in my big box of oddball, vintage tech stuff along with a few vacuum tubes, QIC tapes, Sun-4c parts, and other now-useless stuff.