[Boatanchors] Car Radios

Sat Jan 21 20:47:57 EST 2012

I don't remember just when the cars went to the "Hybrid" design that used a 
string of 12v heater and a 12v B+ supply.  The audio out put was usually a 
single transistor being driven by a tube audio stage.  There was a batch of 
"Space Charge" type tetrode tubes used for the audio stages.  The "Space 
Charge" tube used +12 volts on the 1st grid which was usually the control 
grid in a conventional tube and the "SCREEN" grid was the control grid on 
the space charge tube.

The battery drain was greatly reduced and there was no more vibrator that 
frequently failed and ran a car battery down very quickly.

The design was sort of a "bridge" between tube receivers and solid state 
ones before the transistors were decent amplifiers at RF frequencies!

73,
Sandy W5TVW

-----Original Message-----  space charge tube.
From: J. Forster
Sent: Saturday, January 21, 2012 1:14 PM
To: boatanchors at mailman.qth.net
Subject: Re: [Boatanchors] Car Radios

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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> | Bob Bethman                \\\|///     " The absence of a danger |
> |                           \\ ~ ~ //      signal does *NOT* mean  |
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