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Begin forwarded message:
> From: "Bob, K8LR" <[log in to unmask]>
> Date: January 20, 2012 8:22:47 AM EST
> To: "Bob Tinney" <[log in to unmask]>
> Subject: Car Radios
> Reply-To: "Bob, K8LR" <[log in to unmask]>
>
>
> CAR RADIOS
>
> ---AN INTERESTING STORY.
>
> Radios are so much a part of the driving experience, it seems like cars
> have always had them. But they didn't. Here's the story.
>
> SUNDOWN
>
> 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.
>
> SIGNING ON
>
> 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 man
> ufacture. 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.
>
> HIT THE ROAD
>
> 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 Motorolas 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 second-largest cell phone
> manufac
> turer 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.)
>
>
> Bob, K8LR, [log in to unmask]
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