rolf Loc: Kenora Ont.Canada

Seems like cars always have 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 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 1950s, 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!

JR1 Loc: Tavistock, Devon, UK

I can't stand them, never used one in my car though always been there, carp on to listen to

HEART Loc: God's Country - COLORADO

Learned something new! "ola" - didn't know that was a common derivative of the time. And a WOMAN suggested it! Very interesting. Thanks for the post, Rolf.

Ched49 Loc: Pittsburgh, Pa.

Thanks for the info...back in the '60's' I had a Lear 8 track recorder in my car.

tlbuljac Loc: Oklahoma

Interesting story...thanks for the education :thumbup:

DOOK Loc: Maclean, Australia

You didn't say what you can't stand, JR1, Lear jets, or car radios? I don't have a Lear jet. but, man, you should here the sound system in my old Caddy...1,200 watts & 10" subbies. Willie Nelson never sounded better.

wrr Loc: SEK

only a deaf person would say this...

moe

Thank you for the history of the car radio,I remember as a young man in the 50's waiting for the radio tubes to warm before it would play

TheDoctor Loc: NoVa

Ah, leave it to JR1 to try to poison another thread. Someday we'll be asking, "who shot JR?"

TrainNut Loc: Ridin' the rails

:thumbup:

TrainNut Loc: Ridin' the rails

Great post, I love history. Motorola had the best computer chip but the stupid american people wanted the cheaper (and crappy) Intel. Go figure. There is history behind that too.

Squint Loc: Stockton, CA

Very interesting. Thanks!

twowindsbear

WOW!! What did you record while you were driving?

Ched49 Loc: Pittsburgh, Pa.

You buy pre-recorded 8-track tapes just like buying CD's today. You also record your own music on those 8-track tapes...were you born yesterday?

pjreed Loc: Tonopah, Arizona

:thumbup: