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 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, 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!   
       
       
   Regards,   
       
   Roger   
      
   --- D'Bridge 3.99   
    * Origin: NCS BBS - Houma, LoUiSiAna (1:3828/7)