{"id":2218,"date":"2012-02-27T10:00:52","date_gmt":"2012-02-27T10:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/americainuniform\/?p=2218"},"modified":"2012-02-24T06:08:47","modified_gmt":"2012-02-24T06:08:47","slug":"car-radio-an-interesting-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/americainuniform\/2012\/02\/car-radio-an-interesting-story.html","title":{"rendered":"Car Radio, An Interesting Story"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>CAR TUNES<\/strong>
\nRadios are so much a part of the driving experience, it seems like cars have always had them. But they didn\u2019t. Here\u2019s the story.<\/p>\n

SUNDOWN<\/strong><\/p>\n

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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

Lear and Wavering liked the idea. Both men had tinkered with radios \u2013 Lear had served as a radio operator in the U. S. Navy during World War I \u2013 and it wasn\u2019t long before they were taking apart a home radio and trying to get it to work in a car. But it wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n

SIGNING ON<\/strong><\/p>\n

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 \u201cbattery eliminator\u201d 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.\u00a0 He believed that mass-produced, affordable car radios had the potential to become a huge business.<\/p>\n

Lear and Wavering set up shop in Galvin\u2019s 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\u2019s Packard. Good idea, but it didn\u2019t work \u2013 half an hour after the installation, the banker\u2019s Packard caught on fire. (They didn\u2019t get the loan.)<\/p>\n

Galvin didn\u2019t 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 \u2013 he got enough orders to put the radio into production.<\/p>\n

WHAT\u2019S IN A NAME<\/strong><\/p>\n

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 \u201cola\u201d for their names \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

But even with the name change, the radio still had problems:<\/p>\n

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.)<\/p>\n

In 1930 it took two men several days to put in a car radio \u2013 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.<\/p>\n

HIT THE ROAD<\/strong><\/p>\n

Selling complicated car radios that cost 20 percent of the price of a brand-new car wouldn\u2019t have been easy in the best of times, let alone during the Great Depression \u2013 Galvin lost money in 1930 and struggled for a couple of years after that. But things picked up in 1933 when Ford began offering Motorolas 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 \u201cMotorola\u201d in 1947.)<\/p>\n

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 \u2013 the Handie-Talkie \u2013 for the U. S. Army.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s first pager; in 1969 it supplied the radio and television equipment that was used to televise Neil Armstrong\u2019s first steps on the Moon. In 1973 it invented the world\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO\u2026.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The two men who installed the first radio in Paul Galvin\u2019s car, Elmer Wavering and William Lear, ended up taking very different paths in life.\u00a0 Wavering stayed with Motorola. In the 1950\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Lear also continued inventing. He holds more than 150 patents. Remember eight-track tape players? Lear invented that. But what he\u2019s 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\u2019s first mass-produced, affordable business jet. (Not bad for a guy who dropped out of school after the eighth grade.)<\/p>\n

Courtesy of Jim\u2019s Antique Radio Museum<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

\n

Loyal Subscribers!\u00a0 We need some help.\u00a0 The purpose of our “Heart” section is to publish stories of the experiences, contributions and sacrifices of our military (Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard) and public service personnel (police officers, fire fighters, EMS, merchant marines and others in the public sector) as well as stories of their families.\u00a0 Please search your memory and computer for a few and\u00a0send them to Bill\u00a0(CPT Otis) O’Quin at boquin@ix.netcom.com<\/a><\/strong> for possible publication. \u00a0Thanks!<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Important links for updated military\/defense information:
\nThe Daily News Briefing<\/a><\/strong>:<\/a> Today’s News for the U.S. Military, their families and friends.
\n The Military Trivia Challenge:<\/a><\/strong> Register and test your knowledge about military history.
\n U.S. Department of Defense:<\/a><\/strong> Military Defense News.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CAR TUNES Radios are so much a part of the driving experience, it seems like cars have always had them. But they didn\u2019t. Here\u2019s the story. 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