[Boatanchors] Car Radios

Sat Jan 21 13:24:00 EST 2012

If that is the case maybe you should correct this.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_audio

Geoff <geoffrey at jeremy.mv.com> wrote:

>Strictly Moto BS.Its been going around like a virus recently.
>
>Philco was the first volume auto radio producer and there were other 
>examples going back to 1922.
>
>Carl
>KM1H
>
>----- Original Message ----- 
>From: "Bob Macklin" <macklinbob at gmail.com>
>To: "Boatanchors list" <boatanchors at mailman.qth.net>
>Sent: Friday, January 20, 2012 8:49 PM
>Subject: [Boatanchors] Car Radios
>
>
>Subject: CAR RADIOS
>
>
>      JANUARY 19, 2012
>
>      Interesting reading, particularly, if you did not know the background 
>of the car radio.
>
>
>
>
>        ---------- 
>
>        How car radios came to be...
>
>
>
>        Radios are so much a part of the driving experience, it seems like 
>cars have always had them. But they didn't. Here’s the story.
>
>
>
>        SUNDOWN
>
>        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 second-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.)
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>______________________________________________________________
>Boatanchors mailing list
>Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/boatanchors
>Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
>Post: mailto:Boatanchors at mailman.qth.net
>
>List Administrator: Duane Fischer, W8DBF
>** For Assistance: dfischer at usol.com **
>
>
>This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
>Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
>
>
>-----
>No virus found in this message.
>Checked by AVG - www.avg.com
>Version: 10.0.1416 / Virus Database: 2109/4755 - Release Date: 01/20/12
>
>
>______________________________________________________________
>Boatanchors mailing list
>Home: http://mailman.qth.net/mailman/listinfo/boatanchors
>Help: http://mailman.qth.net/mmfaq.htm
>Post: mailto:Boatanchors at mailman.qth.net
>
>List Administrator: Duane Fischer, W8DBF
>** For Assistance: dfischer at usol.com ** 
>
>
>This list hosted by: http://www.qsl.net
>Please help support this email list: http://www.qsl.net/donate.html
>