It would have been tough to drag around that symphony just to make out.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Gerry Learry" <[log in to unmask]>
To: <[log in to unmask]>
Sent: Friday, November 09, 2012 6:39 AM
Subject: Re: [MSB-Alumni] OT: History of the Car Radio


Those darn girls anyway.
----- 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!