Wow, what a nice article!

Jose - KK4JZX

-----Original Message-----
From: For blind ham radio operators [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of John J. Jacques
Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2012 8:51 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
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!