[Boatanchors] Car Radios

Sat Jan 21 14:14:37 EST 2012

Years ag (ca 1957) I rode in a Bentley (Rolls Royce w/ a different radiator).

The inside was unbelievably quiet (even at 100 MPH), partly because the
radio had no vibrator. It used 12V B+ on the tubes.

Not sure if that was the first such design, but I was sure impressed.

Best,

-John

===============

> 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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> --
> +------------------------------------------------------------------+
> |               AM Amateur Radio Operator    NØDGN                 |
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> |               http://home.comcast.net/~rbethman/                 |
> +------------------------------------------------------------------+
> | Bob Bethman                \\\|///     " The absence of a danger |
> |                           \\ ~ ~ //      signal does *NOT* mean  |
> | rbethman at comcast.net      (/ @ @ /)      that everything is OK " |
> +----------------------o00o---°(_)°---o00o-------------------------+
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