It was a balmy spring evening and
romance was in the air. William Lear and Elmer Wavering were double dating two
ladies.
The two young men in the new car drove the ladies to a lookout point overlooking the Mississippi River to watch the sunset.
This was in the town of Quincy, Illinois, USA. The year was 1929.
It was a romantic night to be sure and a romantic mood can be very thought provoking. One of the ladies observed that it would make the evening more enjoyable if they could listen to music in the car.
The idea appeal to Lear and Wavering. Both men had tinkered with radios and it wasn't long before they were taking apart a home radio and trying to get it to work in a car.
When they finally got their radio to work, they took it to a radio convention in Chicago.
In Chicago they met the owner of Galvin Manufacturing Corporation, Paul Galvin. Galvin also liked the idea of a radio in the car.
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 fire. They didn't get the loan.
Not one to give up Galvin drove his Studebaker nearly 800 miles to Atlantic City to show off the radio at the1930 Radio Manufacturers Association Convention.
He did not have the money to rent a booth, so he parked his car outside the Convention Hall and put the radio on full volume so that passing conventioneers could hear it. That idea worked. He got enough orders to put the radio into production.
Taking a cue from Radiola and Columbiola, Galvin decided to call his product ‘Motorola’.
These early Radios ran on their own batteries, not on the car batteries. So holes had to be cut in the floor boards to accommodate these batteries.
Business picked up in 1933 when Ford began offering Motorola’s radios as a factory fitted option.
In 1934 they got another boost when Galvin struck a deal with B.F. Goodrich Tyre to sell the radios in its chain of tyre stores.
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 hand held 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 set for under $200.
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!
From a very humble beginning the radio has evolved into being an infotainment centre. It is one of the most important fitments in a car. A complete music system with a thousand song capacity, GPS, a camera /TV screen. All these functions are probably voice activated.
And it all started with a woman's suggestion!