[Chrysler300] Car Radios - what most folks don't know

[Ronald Kurtz <mark6268@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hello, everyone:

I thought you may be interested in this account of the car radio.

Best, 
Ron Kurtz
E #292



                                 *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.* 

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 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.* 

  

*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 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.)* 

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]



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