[Scan-DC] Car/police radios, etc.
michael rumberg
m_c_rumberg at hotmail.com
Sun Apr 6 23:16:45 EDT 2014
the original message was sent to the list on 4/1 or 4/2 - I was trying save electrons by trimming out the original. But here is the original text up top followed by the response of my step-dad's friend. Hopefully this makes the email train easier to read:
------------------------------------------------
HISTORY OF THE CAR RADIO
Seems like cars have always had radios, but they
didn't.
Here's the story:
One evening, in 1929, two young men named William
Lear and Elmer Waveringdrove 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 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 easy: 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 carradios 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. 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, with 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 the first handheld two-way
radio -- The Handy-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
for under $200. In 1956 the company introduced the
world's first pager; in 1969 came 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 manufacturers 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
whenhe 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.)
Sometimes it is fun to find out how some of the
many things that we take for granted actually came
into being!
AND
It all started with a woman's suggestion!!
> Date: Sun, 6 Apr 2014 22:49:09 -0400
> To: m_c_rumberg at hotmail.com; scan-dc at mailman.qth.net
> From: jeff at krauss.ws
> Subject: Re: [Scan-DC] Car/police radios, etc.
>
> The original story seems to be missing.
>
> At 10:39 PM 4/6/2014, michael rumberg wrote:
> >Hi All,
> >
> >This was a really fascinating story; I forwarded it to my step-Dad,
> >George Tressel, who is originally from Chicago and involved in lots
> >of early television developments. He passed it to a friend of his -
> >I think you will find his friend's point very interesting.
> >
> >
> >-------- Original message --------
> >From: George Tressel
> >Date:04/03/2014 2:17 PM (GMT-05:00)
> >To: Michael Rumberg
> >Subject: Fwd: Re: Car/police radios, etc.
> >
> >
> > Interesting follow-up from my old friend in Chicago. Mitch was the
> > recording chief for the Chicago Symphony and Chief (I think)
> > Engineer for WFMT in Chicago.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > -------- Original Message --------
> >
> >
> >
> > Subject:
> >
> > Re: Car/police radios, etc.
> >
> >
> > Date:
> > Thu, 03 Apr 2014 12:04:20 -0500
> >
> >
> > From:
> > M Heller/Green
> >
> >
> > :
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > yes and NO... Bill Lear was an amazing character. I didnt know
> > him but my close friend and older mentor Loren Toogood ( who was
> > indeed an inventor with many patents, , among other things) did
> > know Lear rather well. Lear did manage to his name on patents for
> > an amazing number of important things, but what is even more
> > amazing is that he really wasnt as much the inventor as he was a
> > genius entrepeneur. Lear had the uncanny ability to judge the "
> > saleability " of stuff. He could sort out a market even if it was
> > at times a niche market , and then assemble a group of experts
> > and engineers and technicians to come up with the actual details
> > of the devices he wanted to sell. And patent! For example the
> > famous LEARJET started life as a small jet trainer for the Swiss
> > Air Force. Lear saw the potential for that little plane as a
> > private executive and corporate plane and got the rights to have
> > it modified and sold for that application... Certainly Lear DIDNT
> > invent the LEARJET.. what he did was MARKET the LEARJET. Likewise
> > with the 8 track audio cartridge... In that arena my friend
> > Toogood was actually one of the pioneers and experts in the
> > development of early magnetic tape technology.. you might recall
> > the MAGNECORDER.. well Toogood had a major role in the development
> > and design of that machine.. that is, in the actual mechanical
> > aspects, not so much the electronics. Toogood was the chief
> > design engineer for Hallicrafters in the 1930s and was
> > responsible for the production of many famous receivers and from
> > that era.. ... So Toogood knew the industry and the people who
> > were coming up with concepts and refinements of the so called
> > endless loop tape drives.. Lear saw what they were doing and also
> > saw the market potential for the application of endless loop
> > cartridges in cars..One of the actual inventors was a guy named
> > Ralph Couzens, but his name vanished once Lear got on the case!
> >
> >
> >
> > What Lear did was exploit the market.. he was a superb super
> > salesman and for that he deserves a lot of credit.. but one of
> > the biggest items he managed to sell over the years was Bill
> > Lear himself!.. I believe Galvin was the genius behind forming
> > Motorola etc but Lear certainly was a driving force in marketing
> > the stuff... Another Lear device was indeed the ADF for
> > airplanes,., automatic radio direction finding.. he didnt
> > invent it but saw the raw early designs , realized the
> > importance and the applications, got it into production and
> > then had it made and marketed. The autopilot was not invented by
> > LEAR... it was invented by SPERRY of gyroscope fame.. ( and some
> > others) but Lear got the rights to the early models and got his
> > staff to market it.. What was uncanny was his knack for being
> > at the right place at the right time and latching on to
> > technology he could develop. And SELL! And attach his name to!
> > Lear was probably the all time genius of technology marketing!
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > On Apr 3, 2014, at 9:53 AM, George Tressel wrote:
> >
> >
> >
> > From my son in
> > law -- is it accurate?
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > -------- Original Message --------
> >
> >
> >
> > Subject:
> > Car/police radios, etc.
> >
> >
> > Date:
> > Wed, 02 Apr 2014 22:26:43 -0500 (CDT)
> >
> >
> > From:
> > Michael Rumberg <michael.rumberg at verizon.net>
> >
> >
> > To:
> > michael.rumberg at verizon.net
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > I havent checked this story out
> > but believe its correct. Some of you getting this
> > email will certainly remember parts of it!
> >
> > ---------------
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
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