Facts we take for granted

[Bushman]

HISTORY OF THE CAR RADIO

Seems like cars have always had radios, but they didn't, and 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* The 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. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handie-Talkie" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" rel="nofollow

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.

Motorola became 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!

[Husker]

Cool, F'n COOL read. I hope this is true, and not simply some urban legend, but a hella good read no matter what.

It is amazing how items we TOTALLY take for granted, required the pain and work, to ititially get it there.

[HolyBear]

Great read!!! American ingenuity at its best! Reminds me of the Walt Disney story. That's a good one as well. I hope to see a continuation of our dreams being realized in the future. Liberty will allow it to happen...

[OlympicMtDoo]

Great read Bushman, thanks.

[HolyBear]

Could those guys have made the advancements that they did nowadays? Within our regulatory system?

To bring it a little more closely to home, could the advancements made by the members of this forum exist without the liberty provided by the internet?

[Dnderhead]

"advancements made by the members of this forum exist without the liberty provided by the Internet?"
HELL YES...
as for radios in cars..even heaters was optional,some place i have one kicking around..it was called "south wind"
witch was gasoline powered..they also had "exhaust heaters" witch was a cutout that rerouted the exhaust threw your car..

[NcHooch]

....Motorola ......that's pretty cool.

I remember 8-track tape players by Lear. Quite a step to avionics and jet airplanes .

[HolyBear]

"advancements made by the members of this forum exist without the liberty provided by the Internet?"
HELL YES...
as for radios in cars..even heaters was optional,some place i have one kicking around..it was called "south wind"
witch was gasoline powered..they also had "exhaust heaters" witch was a cutout that rerouted the exhaust threw your car..

I was in a hurry when I asked those questions. I apologize for not stating my general question more clearly...
When reading the original post, I wondered if great advancements can still be made within America that could rival the advancements made within our past? I'm having difficulty stating my question without seeming political but my question is really concerned with the ability to dream, create and prosper from our ideas that could rival our past? If so, how? If not, why?

Master Dunder, with much due respect, are you saying that the advancements made by members of this forum could have been made without the freedoms afforded to us by the anonymity of the internet? I understand that distilling has been going on for centuries, and we're not splitting atoms here, but look at the advancements made of just the safety aspects of stilling because of this site. What about OD's.flute? Or the knowledge you've passed on to members? I was just using this site as an example to ask the bigger question about our ability to continue to advance as we have in the past...
For those reading this that might be familiar with the term, "Who is John Gault?" I was asking, is Gaults Gulch still America???

[blind drunk]

When reading the original post, I wondered if great advancements can still be made within America that could rival the advancements made within our past?

My question to your question would be - why do you believe advancements have stopped or slowed down? When I look around, I see advancement and innovation moving at the speed of sound. They are everywhere, all around us and in almost every corner of the world. Every area of study is advancing in leaps and bounds - from earth sciences, cosmology, nano technology. The Mar's Rover is eating dirt and sending back to earth chemical analysis of the soil and our laps tops are more powerful than the computers used during the race to the moon, etc. And then there's all the advancements made in healthcare and curing deadly diseases. So many diseases that were a death sentence just a generation ago are now either treatable or curable. The treatments for mental illness are also improving daily. Now is a great time to be alive and tomorrow will be even better.

I bet that even John Galt has stopped all of his shrugging

[Dnderhead]

"are you saying that the advancements made by members of this forum could have been made without the freedoms afforded to us by the anonymity of the Internet?"

yes ,if you have a mind to,,reading what works and dont just saves you form making the same mistakes.