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N0KFQ > TODAY 26.09.14 17:02l 57 Lines 2606 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 36741_N0KFQ
Read: GUEST
Subj: Today in History - Sep 26
Path: IW8PGT<IZ3LSV<I0OJJ<N6RME<N0KFQ
Sent: 140926/1500Z 36741@N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA BPQK1.4.60
Sep 26, 1928:
First day of work at the Galvin Manufacturing Corporation
On this day in 1928, work begins at Chicago's new Galvin
Manufacturing Corporation. (The company had officially
incorporated the day before.) In 1930, Galvin would introduce the
Motorola radio, the first mass-produced commercial car radio.
(The name had two parts: "motor" evoked cars and motion, while
"ola" derived from "Victrola" and was supposed to make people
think of music.)
In 1921, engineer Paul Galvin and his friend Edward Stewart
started a storage-battery factory in Marshfield, Wisconsin; it
went out of business two years later. In 1926, Galvin and Stewart
re-started their battery-manufacturing company, this time in
Chicago. That one went out of business too, but not before the
partners figured out a way for home radios to draw power from an
electrical wall outlet; they called it the dry-battery
eliminator. Galvin bought back the eliminator part of his
bankrupt company at auction for $750 and went right back into
business, building and repairing eliminators and AC radio sets
for customers like Sears, Roebuck.
Soon, however, Galvin's attention turned to the car-radio
business. The first car radios--portable "travel radios" powered
by batteries, followed by custom-installed built-in radios that
cost $250 apiece (about $2,800 in today's dollars)--had appeared
in 1926, but they were way too expensive for the average driver.
If he could find a way to mass-produce affordable car radios,
Galvin thought, he'd be rich. In June 1930, he enlisted inventors
Elmer Wavering and William Lear to retrofit his old Studebaker
with a radio and drove 800 miles to the Radio Manufacturers
Association's annual meeting in Atlantic City. He parked outside
the convention, turned up the music (for this purpose, Wavering
had installed a special speaker under the Studebaker's hood), and
waited for the RMAers' orders to come rolling in.
A few did, and Galvin sold enough of his $110 5T71 car radios to
come close to breaking even for the year. He changed his
company's name to Motorola and changed the way we drive--and ride
in--cars forever.
For his part, William Lear went on to invent the eight-track
cartridge-tape system, which came standard in every Ford car
starting in 1966. Meanwhile, carmakers developed their own
radio-manufacturing divisions, gradually squeezing Motorola out
of the market it had built. The company stopped making car radios
in 1984. Today, it's best known for making cellular phones.
73, K.O. n0kfq
N0KFQ @ N0KFQ.#SWMO.MO.USA.NA
E-mail: kohiggs@gmail.com
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