[Hallicrafters] Non Hallicrafters but interesting radio history

[Walt Cates]

This is just a little bit of history for us older people......



Interesting.


HISTORY OF THE CAR 
RADIO

Seems like cars have always 

had radios, but they didn't. Here's the true 

story:


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.


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 carradio --

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.



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.)

Best Regards, Walt Cates, WD0GOF, http://www.myhamshack.com/WD0GOF/<http://www.myhamshack.com/WD0GOF/>
Only when you take full responsibility for where you are in life will you be able to find peace and joy in life.