What's funnier, I was looking for it to send someone, now I can.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Colin McDonald" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2012 12:50 AM
Subject: Re: [MSB-Alumni] OT: History of the Car Radio


> funny, i was just talking about this article the other day and wondering
> where I could find a copy.
> Thanks.
>
> 73
> Colin, V A6BKX
> ----- Original Message ----- 
> From: "John J. Jacques" <[log in to unmask]>
> To: <[log in to unmask]>
> Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2012 6:51 PM
> Subject: Fw: [MSB-Alumni] OT: History of the Car Radio
>
>
>> Hi all, I just got this from another list and thought you would enjoy it!
>>
>> 73:
>> John
>>
>> John Jacques
>> Amateur Radio Station: KD8PC
>> "Where Cat Is,  Is Civilization!"
>>
>> --------- Forwarded message ----------
>> HISTORY OF THE CAR RADIO
>>
>> Seems like cars have always had radios, not true. 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 carradio -- 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 manufacturers 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!