# History of the car radio, and it started with a woman's suggestion!



## Marie5656 (Apr 9, 2017)

*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 theMotorola.*
*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!!*


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## Buckeye (Apr 9, 2017)

Great story!  Who knew?


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## RadishRose (Apr 9, 2017)

That was interesting and fun to read!


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## SifuPhil (Apr 9, 2017)

Excellent story - thanks!


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## Marie5656 (Apr 9, 2017)

Hoot N Annie said:


> Great story!  Who knew?



I need to give a shout out to a real life friend of mine, Norm, who always sends me interesting things like this.


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## Falcon (Apr 9, 2017)

Thank you Marie.  VERY interesting post.


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## Pappy (Apr 10, 2017)

Great story. Thanks for posting. The oldest car radio I ever had was in my 37 Buick. It left much to be desired.


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## Deucemoi (Apr 10, 2017)

http://www.carhistory4u.com/the-last-100-years/parts-of-the-car/car-radio


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## Pappy (Apr 10, 2017)

37 Buick radio. Two knobs and a crappy speaker. About as basic as you can get.


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## Manatee (Apr 11, 2017)

My father bought a brand new 37 Chevy that never did have a radio.  His first car with a radio was a 50 Chevy.
Back in those days radios, heaters, side mirrors and other accessories were installed by the dealer.


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## Pattypan (May 13, 2017)

Excellent read.  I'm a little late to the party because I was sitting in my driveway listening to my car radio. lol.  Thanks for posting this!  I have a poster on my wall that reads, "Listen to women for a _change_."  See what happens when we do. lol.


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