[Boatanchors] Car Radios

Sat Jan 21 13:31:16 EST 2012

I can't remember what was in the 1950 Buick Roadmaster we had.

However, it DID have the pushbuttons that you could set to a station, 
and the antenna was on the roof right over the windshield. You could 
turn it with a knob to get better reception.

Come to think of it, it was the same in the 1952 Buick Roadmaster.

Bob - N0DGN

On 1/21/2012 1:24 PM, Jim Wilhite wrote:
> 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.)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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