Re: [FWDLK] HISTORY OF THE CAR RADIO---FANTASTIC READ.!!!!!
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Re: [FWDLK] HISTORY OF THE CAR RADIO---FANTASTIC READ.!!!!!



The oldest factory installed car radio I ever saw was in a 1917 Oldsmobile, at an Olds National Convention. Yes, Motorola was there at the dawn of car radios, but they were not the first.

The "Town & Country" signal seeking radio in my 56 Dodge was made by Motorola.

Dave Homstad
56 Dodge D500 


On Wed, Nov 28, 2012 at 1:09 PM, Ron Swartley wrote:

       You will find this story very  interesting and very educational---only in America.!!
 
       Ron
 
Subj:  HISTORY OF THE CAR    RADIO

 

HISTORY OF THE CAR RADIO   Seems like cars have always    had radios,  
but they didn't. 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 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.
>
>   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 manufacturer 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!





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