[RVRC] CAR RADIO - HOW IT ALL BEGAN

[E Drew Moore]

From: John Manna, WA2F

 

Subject: CAR RADIO - HOW IT ALL BEGAN

 

 
CAR RADIO, 


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.)

Some of us have been fortunate to have met both of these 
gentlemen and  they were - gentlemen.