Music in Motion

While one man is given credit for designing the first car radio, another had the vision and financial means to make it a reality. William P. Lear, the same Lear who later became famous for the development of the corporate jet that bears his name, and Paul V. Galvin, the founder of corporate giant Motorola, both deserve the distinction for making the mobile radio a reality.




Lear, with only an eighth grade education, was an engineering genius who, in addition to the car radio and Lear Jet, received over 100 patents during his lifetime. The car radio was one of Lear’s earliest inventions, which he and his assistants developed in the late 1920s. The problem for Lear and his group was that, while they had a winning idea, they didn’t have the capital to market and produce the product.


A person who did have the funding was a forward-thinker by the name of Paul V. Galvin. Galvin and his brother Joseph started the Galvin Manufacturing Corporation in Chicago in 1928 for the purpose of manufacturing battery eliminators. These electronic devices enabled battery-powered home radios to operate on household electric current proving to be extremely useful, earning the Galvin brothers a neat profit. But in 1929, during the onset of the Great Depression that devastated the U.S. economy, together with the reality that the battery eliminator was fast becoming obsolete, the Galvins were searching for a new product to promote.



As it happened, the radio parts company founded by William Lear was located in the same factory building as Galvin Manufacturing Corporation. Lear technicians experimenting with radio technologies came up with a working model of the first car radio. Galvin was immediately taken by the concept, and despite the worsening economy, he gambled that the demand for automobile and radio technologies would continue to grow. With this in mind, he bought the rights to the Lear’s concept and turned one man’s invention into a multimillion dollar business.
Galvin assembled a talented and energetic engineering team consisting of some of the brightest minds in the nation including chief production engineer Don H. Mitchell and a young Elmer Wavering, who later was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame, to turn the car radio blueprint into a workable commodity. The team faced difficult technical problems like overcoming electrical interference (before this time, automobile radios had been deemed impractical because they had very poor reception), finding space in the car for large radio components and building it sturdy enough to endure rough roads.


In 1930, a few days before Galvin made a road trip from his factory in Chicago to attend the Radio Manufacturers Association Convention in Atlantic City, his crew finally came up with a working prototype of the car radio. The model they fashioned was able to receive a clear signal with the car motor running for the first time and by squeezing some radio parts inside and others under the floor, the radio fit into the car and ultimately made the difficult 850 mile journey to the show intact.


Even though Galvin didn’t have a booth at the show, by using a bullhorn to draw crowds outside the convention’s entrance, he demonstrated his car radio device. Interest in his car radio was so high he returned to Chicago with enough sales orders to ensure that the company would survive to face the next challenges - namely sales, manufacturing and installation on a large scale.


Galvin wanted to create a memorable name for his growing car radio company that would be something people would remember, so Galvin Manufacturing Corporation became the now familiar “Motorola.” (Motorola is simply a hybrid of “motor” and “victrola,” an early name for the phonograph.)


By offering units for about $120 including accessories and installation, which compared favorably with the $200-$300 custom-designed units then available, Motorola was soon seeing double digit profits. But since the automobiles of the day didn’t come assembled with the car radio, the next challenge for Galvin and his team was to work out a system for after-sale installation.




In an attempt to overcome this hurdle, Paul Galvin and Elmer Wavering traveled around the United States selling radios and teaching dealers how to install them correctly. With business growing, a fleet of Motorola sales and service trucks with factory-trained sales engineers soon supported radio dealers with sales, service and installation.
Eventually, the company established its first chain of distributorships (Authorized Motorola Installation Stations as they were called) and began advertising its products in newspapers and on highway billboards. One of its first customers for this new technology were local police departments, a segment that became so prosperous the company formed a separate police radio division for them within the firm.

In 1930, Motorola produced the first commercially successful car radio, which had to be installed by the dealer. By the early 1940s, Motorola was becoming a household word.

Despite this intense mechanical training, the process for installing radios in cars wasn’t easy. Elmer Wavering put it this way: “If somebody bought a new car and decided to put in a car radio, they’d get a real shock. They saw us go in and rip out the brand new headlining in the car, drill holes into the floor for our batteries, and rig up a whole complicated electrical system with a network of wires.”


By the mid 1930s, new technologies were making the car radio a fixture on the American automobile landscape. The most important of these technologies was in 1936 when one of Motorola’s competitors, Delco, began producing the first dashboard-installed car radios. Soon, most American car brands came with a radio, enhancing the driving experience.
Another breakthrough was the development of the FM radio band pioneered by Major Edwin Armstrong. FM broadcasting was an improvement over AM because it provided for reduced static interference, improved audio quality and the elimination of nighttime interference between various radio stations.


The popularity of the car radio spawned a number of competitors who carved out a piece of the market hitherto dominated by Motorola. Companies like the aforementioned Delco, Philco and others began to produce their own version of the car radio with varying degrees of success.
Today, there are hundreds of manufacturers vying for the car radio business in both factory and custom-built varieties. A few companies like Kenwood, Pioneer and Sony dominate the car stereo market, spending millions of dollars on production, research and marketing.


In addition to the advent of FM broadcasting, other improvements to car radios have included the first telescopic rod antenna, ignition suppression and permeability tuning. The above notwithstanding, the technical aspects of the car radio business have changed little over the years. That is until the appearance of what’s known as satellite radio.


With the launch in the U.S. of XM in 2001 and Sirius in 2002, satellite radio has radically changed the car radio dynamic. Unlike conventional radios, programming technology is provided by satellite, not from local radio broadcasting towers. With satellite technology, radio broadcasts can now reach the entire country, rather having to listen to programming in your local broadcast area.


In addition, each provider offers over 100 channels to choose from instead of the dozen or so available with local radio. Satellite radio listeners receive a full specter of broadcasting genres everything from jazz and comedy, to news, rock ‘n’ roll and many more. This new technology also offers superior sound quality compared to conventional car radios with virtually no fading or interference.


But unlike standard AM and FM stations who depend on advertising to survive, space-based radio service providers charge a subscription fee for the privilege of tapping into this new broadcast technology. From Kia to Rolls Royce, more and more cars are coming factory installed, many as standard equipment.


For more information about technological advances in the automotive industry go to MotorCities National Heritage Area at www.motorcities.org.