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!