[SFDXA] SPAM-LOW: Re: Car Radios...
Kai
k.siwiak at ieee.org
Sat Feb 15 12:05:01 EST 2014
Regrettably the Motorola Museum is not accessible by the public, at least it
wasn't a few years ago.
-Kai
On 2/15/2014 9:41 AM, Mike Williams wrote:
> Good story Bill; as an ex Motorolan I can attest to the technical astuteness
> of the company when they were in their prime. The Motorola museum in
> Schaumburg holds a number of items, including the car radio and of course the
> infamous handie talkies, as well as numerous other technical marvels. Walking
> through the Motorola plant in Illinois and Plantation, FL was always an
> impressive tour as it was a thriving production arena of two way, cellular and
> military products. American manufacturing at its best.
>
> 73 de W4DL Mike
>
>
>
> On 2/14/2014 11:09 AM, Bill wrote:
>>
>> You might have read this story before. But it's such a cool story, I
>> thought I'd pass it on anyway.
>>>>
>>>> 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
>>>> 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
>>>> 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 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 theMotorola.
>>>> 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 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.)
>>>> 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!!
>>>>
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>
> ______________________________________________________________
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> SFDXA Repeater 147.33+ 103.5 Tone
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