[AMRadio] A bit of Radio History

Wed Jan 25 16:38:09 EST 2012

The problem is that it has already been beaten to death on Boatanchors.

Most of it is erroneous.

Folks need to dig deeper than a quick snip from another list.

Bob - N0DGN

On 1/25/2012 4:26 PM, Todd Carpenter wrote:
> Awesome, i love stories like that
>
> Sent from my Samsung smartphone on AT&T
>
> CL in NC<mjcal77 at yahoo.com>  wrote:
>
>> History class for a change of pace.  Some of you may have seen this before, but still good to refresh some roots.
>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>> Sometimes it is fun to find out how some of the many
>>> things that we take
>>> for
>>>> granted actually came into being! It all started with a
>>> woman's suggestion
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Seems like cars have always had radios, but they
>>> didn't.
>>>> Here's the true story:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> SUNSET
>>>>
>>>> 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.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> SIGNING ON
>>>> 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.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> HIT THE ROAD
>>>> 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.)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
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