You will find this story very
interesting and very educational---only in America.!!
Ron
Subj:
HISTORY OF THE CAR
RADIO
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 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, 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.) 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!
=
*************************************************************
To unsubscribe or set your subscription options,
please go to
http://lists.psu.edu/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=l-forwardlook&A=1
Help The Forward Look with every Amazon purchase by clicking here!
Help the Forward Look with every eBay purchase by starting your search here! |