The Auto Radio - a little history.
From
Marc Lewis@1:396/45 to
All on Monday, June 08, 2020 20:28:03
Hello All.
"Sort of" audio related but informative and interesting.
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 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
radios 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 hand-held 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 hand-held 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 the radio direction finder (ADF) 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!
Now-a-days, it's not at all uncommon to find a vehicle that boasts
well over a kilowatt of audio power and dozens of speakers, along with
high definition satellite and FM radio... It's come a LONG way.
Best regards,
Marc
--- timEd/2 1.10.y2k+
* Origin: Sursum Corda! BBS-Huntsville,AL-bbs.sursum-corda.com (1:396/45)
From
August Abolins@2:221/360 to
Marc Lewis on Wednesday, November 04, 2020 17:53:26
On 08/06/2020 3:28 p.m., Marc Lewis : All wrote:
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..
[snip]
(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!
A lot of these backstories are lost and gone forever.
I was not aware (or maybe I forgot) about how Motorola came into being.
Now-a-days, it's not at all uncommon to find a vehicle
that boasts well over a kilowatt of audio power and dozens
of speakers, along with high definition satellite and FM
radio... It's come a LONG way.
Necessity is the mother of invention. Even during these covid
times, some fresh new things have come to people's minds.
--
../|ug
BTW.. This echo is available on Telegram for your tablet/smartphone.
Install Telegram, then PM @aabolins or
https://t.me/aabolins.
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* Origin: nntp://rbb.fidonet.fi - Lake Ylo - Finland (2:221/360.0)
From
August Abolins@2:333/808.7 to
Charles Pierson on Sunday, November 08, 2020 00:44:01
Hi Charles!
07 Nov 20 14:59, you wrote to me:
The first group of echos were online around July.
Has it been that long already?
Time flies when you're getting old.
My bad. Time is messing with my mind too. The first group was officially activated just after the 1st week of September. Before that, the TgM/Fido concept was discussed in F4F for a little while.
It was this one dated 29 Jul by Pasquale that piqued my curiosity:
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To All
Subj FTN to Telegram
MSGID : 2:335/370 5f21ed49
PIO : GEO+LNX l.l.5-b20170303
TIO : hpt/lnx 1.4.0-sta 16-02-06 Hello All !
I believe that a way for the future of FIDONET to follow could be a geteway to telegram . Has no one ever thought about developing it?
"Young people use Telegram as we (al least I)used FIDONET, having a gateway could"
open new opportunities to the movement FIDONET!
What do you think aout it?
Pasquale
-+- - ITBNET BBS
http://bbs.itbnet .eu
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--[end]--
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Then, I looked around the 'net and spotted what looked like an existing presence in Telegram already, albiet prrimarily in Russian.
I haven't heard from Pasquale much since then.
Meanwhile, the linkup has come a long way including a rewrite of the script and added features.
--- GoldED+/W32-MINGW 1.1.5-b20180707
* Origin: ----> (2:333/808.7)