History Of The Car Radio...A Woman's Idea!!!
HISTORY OF THE CAR RADIO
Seems like cars have always had radios, but they didn't. Here's the true
Story:
One evening, in 1929, two
Young men named William Lear and Elmer Wavering
Drove their girlfriends to a lookout point high
Above the Mississippi River town of Quincy , Illinois ,
To watch the sunset.
It was a romantic
Night to be sure, but one of the women observed that
It would be even nicer if they could listen to music
In the car.
Lear and Wavering liked the
Idea. Both men had tinkered with radios (Lear had
Served as a radio operator in the U.S. Navy during
World War I)
And it wasn't long before they were
Taking apart a home radio and trying to get it to
Work in a car.
But it wasn't as easy as it sounds:
Automobiles have ignition switches, generators,
Spark plugs, and other electrical equipment that
Generate noisy static interference,
Making it nearly
Impossible to listen to the radio when the engine
Was running.
One by one, Lear and
Wavering identified and eliminated each source of
Electrical interference.
When they finally got their
Radio to work, they took it to a radio convention in
Chicago ..
There they met Paul Galvin, owner of
Galvin Manufacturing Corporation.
He made a product
Called a "battery eliminator" a device that allowed
Battery-powered radios to run on household AC
Current.
But as more homes were wired for electricity
More radio manufacturers made AC-powered radios.
Galvin needed a new product to manufacture.
When he met Lear and Wavering at the
Radio convention, he found it.
He believed that
Mass-produced, affordable car radios had the
Potential to become a huge
Business.
Lear and Wavering set up
Shop in Galvin's factory, and when they perfected
Their first radio, they installed it in his
Studebaker.
Then Galvin went to a local banker to
Apply for a loan. Thinking it might sweeten the
Deal, he had his men install a radio in the banker's
Packard.
Good idea, but it didn't work -- Half an
Hour after the installation, the banker's Packard
Caught on fire. (They didn't get the loan.)
Galvin didn't give up.
He drove his Studebaker nearly 800 miles
To Atlantic City to show off the radio at the
1930 Radio Manufacturers Association convention.
Too broke to afford a booth, he parked the car outside
The convention hall and cranked up the radio so that
Passing conventioneers could hear it.
That idea worked -- He got enough orders to put the radio into production.
WHAT'S IN A NAME
That first production model Was called the 5T71.
Galvin decided he needed to
Come up with something a little catchier.
In those days many companies in the phonograph and radio
Businesses used the suffix "ola" for their names -
Radiola, Columbiola, and Victrola were three of the
Biggest. Galvin decided to do the same thing, and
Since his radio was intended for use in a motor
Vehicle, he decided to call it the Motorola.
But even with the name
Change, the radio still had problems:
When Motorola went on sale in 1930, it cost about $110
uninstalled, at a time when you could buy a brand-new car for $650, and the
country was sliding into the Great Depression.
(By that measure, a radio for a new car would cost about $3,000 today.)
In 1930 It took two men several days to put in a car radio --
The dashboard had to be taken apart so that the receiver
and a single speaker could be installed, and the ceiling had to be cut open
to install the antenna.
These early radios ran on their own batteries,
Not on the car battery, so holes had
To be cut into the floorboard to accommodate them.
The installation manual had eight complete diagrams
And 28 pages of Instructions.
Selling complicated car
Radios that cost 20 percent of the price of a
Brand-new car wouldn't have been easy in the best of
Times, let alone during the Great Depression --
Galvin lost money in 1930 and struggled for a couple
Of years after that.
But things picked up in 1933
When Ford began offering Motorola's pre-installed at
The factory.
In 1934 they got another boost when
Galvin struck a deal with B.F. Goodrich tire company
To sell and install them in its chain of tire stores.
By then the price of the radio, installation included, had
dropped to $55. The Motorola car radio was off and running.
(The name of the company would be officially changed from
Galvin Manufacturing to "Motorola" in 1947.)
In the meantime,
Galvin continued to develop new uses for car radios.
In 1936, the same year that it introduced push-button
tuning, it also introduced the Motorola Police Cruiser, a standard car radio
that was factory preset to a single frequency to pick up police broadcasts.
In 1940 he developed with
the first handheld two-way radio -- The
Handie-Talkie -- for the U. S. Army.
A lot of the communications
technologies that we take for granted today were
born in Motorola labs in the years that followed
World War II.
In 1947 they came out with the first television to sell
under $200.
In 1956 the company introduced the world's first pager;
in 1969 it supplied the radio and television equipment that was
used to televise Neil Armstrong's first steps on the Moon.
In 1973 it invented the world's first handheld
cellular phone.
Today Motorola is one of the largest cell phone manufacturer in the world --
And it all started with the car radio.
WHATEVER HAPPENED TO
The two men who installed
the first radio in Paul Galvin's car, Elmer Wavering
and William Lear, ended up taking very different
paths in life.
Wavering stayed with Motorola. In the
1950's he helped change the automobile experience
again when he developed the first automotive
alternator, replacing inefficient and unreliable
generators.
The invention lead to such luxuries as
power windows, power seats, and, eventually,
air-conditioning.
Lear also continued inventing.
He holds more than 150 patents. Remember
eight-track tape players? Lear invented that.
But what he's really famous for are his contributions to
the field of aviation.
He invented radio direction
finders for planes,
aided in the invention of the
autopilot,
designed the first fully automatic
aircraft landing system,
and in 1963 introduced his
most famous invention of all, the Lear Jet,
the world's first mass-produced, affordable business
jet. (Not bad for a guy who dropped out of school
after the eighth
grade.)
Sometimes it is
fun to find out how some of the many things that we
take for granted actually came into being!
and
It all started with a woman's
suggestion!
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