PAUL GALVIN WAS IN NEW YORK CITY in his by now familiar role of fighting off creditors when he heard about the first automobile radio. An enterprising partnership out on Long Island had started the business. For $240 (at a time when you could buy a Ford for $590) they would install a radio in your car. First they took the dashboard out put a radio chassis in the hole and then reinstalled the dashboard which now had holes cut in it for the knobs. They ran an antenna either under the running board or in the header and mounted a bulky “B” battery wherever they could find space. Finally they installed a four inch speaker.
After all this was done what the customer got was usually nothing more than the sound of a faint voice losing a battle against static.
But Galvin was fascinated. This was going to make the company finally solvent. It was clear to him that the first man to successfully mate the primary phenomenon of the twentieth century the automobile with the phenomenon in second place the radio was going to get rich. Practically everybody thought he was crazy.
The first Galvin Manufacturing Company radios left something to be desired in terms of convenience style and effectiveness. One of the first (for which the credit is given to Hank Saunders although it’s obvious that Galvin and others more than likely including Bill Lear helped) was mounted in the rumble seat of a Model a Ford. It was an Atwater Kent chassis and to shield the radio from the interference generated by the engine the generator the lights and everything else a shield was necessary. The shielded radio was so large that the only place it would fit was in the space left when the rumble seat was removed.
Inside the body was a large “B” battery. The antenna was ingenious. In those days automobiles didn’t have a metal roof. There was a large opening on the top closed in with fabric resting on chicken wire and generously coated with one kind or another of supposedly waterproof “top dressing.”
Galvin’s technicians put the chicken wire to work. First they cut it loose so that it didn’t touch the metal of the body anywhere. (To keep the roof up they laced butcher’s twine through the chicken wire.) Then they simply connected the antenna leads from the radio to the chicken wire. It worked.
Once they had a working automobile radio Galvin rationalized it was now simply a matter of improving the technique. Among the other problems he faced was the sheer bulk of a radio. There was simply no place to house the radio in its three major sections (a fishing tackle box size for the radio itself; a slightly larger box for the battery; and a slightly smaller box for the loudspeaker) and the necessary accessories (the antenna and the wiring between the batteries and the radio and the radio and the antenna and the radio and the loudspeaker).
Once all the parts had been put in place (which often involved a good deal of cutting welding bracing and reupholstering) the technicians could begin to try to make it play.
Finally after installing and reinstalling radios of various designs in the cars belonging to practically any employee willing to have his car cut up in the name of progress in potential company growth Galvin came up with a version he felt would be the hit of the 1930 Convention of the Radio Manufacturer’s Association of America to be held that year in Atlantic City.
Getting it into the Galvin family car was something of a problem. The radio itself simply wouldn’t fit behind the dashboard. It was mounted (inside a heavy shield) inside the engine compartment on a bracket welded to the fire wall.
The control panel was a small box mounted on the steering wheel shaft. There were two controls one to change frequency and the other to turn the set on and off and to adjust the volume. The knobs on the steering wheel control box were connected to the radio in the engine compartment by two long (30 inches) shafts of solid steel.
The loudspeaker was in a box fastened to and under the dashboard. The battery was housed in a special compartment cut into the floor of the car at an odd appearing angle necessary to avoid the frame driveshaft and muffler.
But it worked and Galvin set out for Atlantic City with his wife and son blissfully ignoring the fact that he (the company) was somewhat arrears in his dues in the Radio Manufacturers Association and the Association had been unwilling to reserve any space for him in the demonstration hall. In fact so far as the Radio Manufacturer’s Association was concerned in 1930 Paul Galvin and the Galvin Manufacturing Company didn’t exist.
On the way from Chicago to New Jersey in the car the radio while it continued to play began to demonstrate an unusual sound; the announcers and singers all seemed to be warbling. After, some thought Galvin located the problem. At the speed he was making (roaring along at fifty) over the roads (mostly gravel) a vibration was set up from the wheels to the steering wheel and from the steering wheel to the two shafts running from the control box on the shaft to the radio. When Galvin reached down and touched them they were vibrating as a taut rubber band will do when plucked. The vibration was inducing the warble.
That was a problem he decided that could be solved later; for the time being he would dampen the vibration during a demonstration by casually resting his hand on the vibrating shafts.
Galvin reached Atlantic City and set up a demonstration on the street there being no room for him in the exhibition hall. He began taking whatever dealers he could buttonhole on what sounds like a ride around a Monopoly Board. He picked them up at Park Place drove them to Indiana Avenue thence to the Boardwalk and from the Boardwalk back to Park Place.
While he drove Mrs. Galvin buttonholed more dealers. The exhibition was a practical if not conspicuous success: Some of the men who got in line to hear the “Auto Radio” weren’t interested in radio at all; they had heard that Galvin was a bootlegger and when they demanded booze and none was forthcoming some of them demanded to be let out of the car even before it reached the Boardwalk.
But some to whom the radio was demonstrated were dealers and some were interested and actually placed orders mostly for one set some for two and one gambling dealer for a half dozen.
It was enough to put Galvin Manufacturing Company into the auto radio business when Galvin got back to Chicago. The problem of the vibrating tuning and volume control shafts was yet to be solved and Galvin started looking around for a solution.
The obvious solution to the problem was a flexible shaft. Flexible shafts were in use most commonly to power the clippers used by barbers and to clip fleece from sheep. Galvin thought these might be the solution to his problem but when he looked into it he learned that these flexible shafts turned only in one direction and would be useless for his purposes. He had to turn the radio off as well as on adjust the volume and tune the receiver. The only flexible shafts that turned in both directions were expensive heavy duty shafts used to power of all things washing machines. It was possible of course to have shafts made to his design but the costs were large and out of the question for the several hundred no more than a thousand he would need and more importantly could pay for the time being.
It looked for a while as if the unavailability of this one relatively simple part was going to keep Galvin Manufacturing Company from making auto radios. But then there was a stroke of good luck. Galvin in another of his regular sessions with his banker about getting enough money to keep Galvin Manufacturing afloat mentioned the shaft problem in passing.
“That’s one problem I think I can solve for you Paul” the banker said. “One of our clients has just received a shipment of flexible bidirectional shafts from Germany.
Something went wrong when they were being manufactured and they’re an inch or two too short for uses. Our client can’t use them and the manufacturer who has no other market for them has admitted his error and is willing to take the loss. I can get them for you for practically nothing. Now if you can make them fit “We’ll make them fit” Galvin said.
The banker was so pleased with himself that several weeks later he sent his Packard around to Galvin Manufacturing for the installation of a radio. He watched with horrified interest as Galvin s technicians cut into the roof to install the antenna; as they cut holes in the floorboard for the battery box; as they tore out plush upholstery to install the wiring; and as they ripped out the dashboard.
Galvin told him installation was an eight hour job and took him to lunch. They would be back in time he said for the banker to be able to watch the testing and adjustment of the newly installed radio. They got back in time for the banker to watch the fire department put out the fire that a short circuit had caused; the Packard burned to the hubcaps.
The banker was understandably annoyed. The problem of how to get back in his graces was solved a week later. Then Galvin was able to telephone him make idle conversation for a moment or two and then announce that his own car had burned up following installation of an auto radio.
Once, the first dozen and then the first hundred and then the first thousand auto radios were installed and delivered the idea caught on. Galvin could now order his own flexible shafts and they had learned by experience the techniques of installing radios in different model cars.
The first radios had been sold (for between $100 and $130) at a loss. They were now being made on an assembly line and sold and installed at a profit.
The radios had no name and there was something about the term “auto radio” that was unsatisfactory. For one thing he couldn’t copyright it and that meant anybody could install a radio call it an auto radio and take advantage of the prestige that was already coming to the Galvin Manufacturing product.
In 1930 Galvin himself came up with the name “Motorola” obviously taking the “Ola” from the very successful Victor Talking Machine Company’s phonograph called the Victrola. (That company had been absorbed by the Radio Corporation of America founded by David Sam-off the radio operator of the Titanic disaster.)
Motorola was off and running. Galvin never had to scurry around to find money for a payroll again. By 1940 he was by any standards a rich man. And so was Bill Lear who had parlayed his inventive genius into countless inventions and millions of dollars.
It was obvious to Galvin in 1940 that war was coming. There was already a war in Europe and Galvin knew that it was just a matter of time before the United States became involved.
At the invitation of Royal Munger then financial editor of the Chicago Daily News Motorola’s chief engineer Don Mitchell went to watch the 1940 Illinois National Guard maneuvers at Camp McCoy Wisconsin. Mitchell was wholly unimpressed with the Army’s communications radios. They were large and bulky requiring large and complicated power supplies and weren’t very effective. Somewhat less than tactfully he said so to Colonel Leland H. Stanford of the Army’s Signal Corps.
Stanford admitted that the available radios were less than satisfactory but said there was little that could be done about it. Research necessary to make a better “family” of radios would cost money and there simply wasn’t any money available.
Mitchell back in Chicago reported what he had seen and his conversation with Colonel Stanford to Paul Galvin. Galvan’s response was immediate and abrupt: “Make them one” he said. “We’ll worry about getting paid for it later.”
Galvin himself entered into the design and production of the three prototype portable transmitter receiving units later to be famous as the “Handie Talkie.” Ex First Lieu tenant Paul Galvin former forward observer for the 131st Field Artillery Allied Expeditionary Force considered that he had just about as much knowledge of what was needed in a field radio as most soldiers and more than many of them.
The problems were enormous. The Army had issued what are known as “Design Specifications” listing all the characteristics they would like to have in a radio how small how light how powerful how durable and so on. “Design Spec” lists are frequently known as the Santa Claus Specs because the realities of technology and cost make the Design Specs as attainable as a list given to Santa Claus by a child.
But Motorola prodded by Galvin and led by Mitchell’s engineering brilliance met or exceeded every specification of the Design Specs and they did it in three months. It is safe to assume that Paul Galvin who wasn’t falsely modest now expected some kind words from the Signal Corps.
They weren’t forthcoming. There was an official silence and some unofficial mumbling: “A civilian toy wholly unsuited for the rigors of military field service” said one senior officer yet to hear a shot fired in anger. “A laboratory items not a practical radio” said another.
There were a few sales. Then as now the Secret Service had an active interest in the latest technology of any kind and the money to buy what they thought they needed to protect the President of the United States. The President of the United States at that time was Franklin Delano Roosevelt who was shamelessly fascinated with gadgets.
Despite everything else that was going on during his inauguration ceremony in 1940 his quick eye saw the Secret Service talking to each other over Motorola Handie Talkies.
He passed word that he wanted to see one and pair was brought to the Oval Room of the White House for the President’s inspection.
Roosevelt was fascinated; there was nothing like this anywhere else in the world. The Army was at that time President Roosevelt had just been informed developing a new kind of unit one in which the soldiers would arrive in battle swinging beneath a parachute canopy. Most of the equipment for the new “paratroopers” the President had been informed would have to be designed especially for them to be light handy and “air droppable.”
When the Chief of Staff of the U. S. Army made his next appearance in the Oval Room the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States handed him a Handie Talkie and announced that he had just found this thing and it was obvious that it was just what the paratroopers needed.
Motorola entered into full production of the Handie Talkie six months before Pearl Harbor. During World War II Motorola also developed and manufactured the Walkie Talkie a larger backpack radio of greater range officially known as the SCR (Signal Corps Radio) 300. The two radios saw service wherever the U. S. Army went in the war and provided our troops with the most effective communication ever available.
Bill Lear meanwhile was growing richer and richer from royalties paid him for his electronic designs. His inventiveness went in all directions from improvements to common table radios to the most advanced and complicated circuits for aviation communication and navigation.
He had also grown somewhat intolerant of bureaucracies and officialdom and in one memorable jaunt managed to antagonize bureaucrats and officials on both sides of the Iron Curtain. He decided that he wanted to tour Europe including Russia in his own airplane. Everybody knew that this was absolutely out of the question at the time. The Russians and other members of the Soviet bloc wouldn’t issue visas for one thing and that was a good thing. The U. S. Government didn’t like the idea of Bill Lear flying an airplane equipped with a full panel of Lear design navigation and communication equipment behind the Iron Curtain. Lear’s designs were at least five years ahead of the Russians and the government didn’t want to run the risk of their being copied.
Lear told the government that the Russians simply could not copy his equipment by looking at it; they would require the engineering data the written down theories which were firmly locked in his vault against espionage. The government told Lear they were sorry but they just would not assist him to get a visa to visit Russia and the other countries behind the Iron Curtain.
One of the reasons Bill Lear regarded himself as a very patriotic American was because of the liberties to which he as an American citizen was entitled. Among these liberties he decided was his right to go anywhere he pleased whenever and however he pleased to go.
He also thought he understood something of the psychology of bureaucrats of whatever nationality. He put this theory to the test. First he went to his tailor and ordered a uniform. It was unlike any uniform of any official body anywhere in the world but it incorporated features from many different uniforms. The tunic was of powder blue and the trousers were stripped down the seam in the manner of Field Marshal’s trousers. There were stars and gold braid and epaulettes.
With that in his suitcase he loaded his wife into a light twin engine airplane and proved the efficiency of his electronic navigation system by flying from the United States to Europe. After the first landing he put on his uniform. He flew all over Europe including the Soviet Union without benefit of visa official travel documents or anything else.
His assessment of the bureaucratic mind was perfect. He didn’t encounter one bureaucrat with enough courage to dare to ask someone flying his own airplane and wearing a glorious uniform like that for papers of any sort. Then satisfied he flew home.
There was only one thing wrong with the trip he realized. He hadn’t been able to go fast enough. The piston engine light twin was too slow for a trip of that length. What was obviously needed was a small jet airplane.
Everybody knew that was impossible. All the major manufacturers of aircraft large jets and small private airplanes had devoted thousands of engineering hours and millions of dollars to the idea and decided that not only was it impractical to make a small jet but that if one were available nobody would buy one.
Bill Lear founded another company this one called the Lear Jet Company. Using his own money he designed built and test flew a small passenger jet. It was an enormous success and he sold them as quickly as they could be manufactured.
He next turned his attention to a small problem that nagged him. He liked to have music when he was riding around in his car but he disliked having his music interrupted by someone trying to sell him dental adhesive or mouthwash. What was needed for the passenger automobile he decided was some means of providing what music the car owner wanted when he wanted it and without a word from the sponsor.
A phonograph would fit the bill but was obviously out of the question because of the vibration of the car. That left the tape player. The tape recorder would provide uninterrupted music but there were certain problems using the reel to reel tape player. For one thing it would be next to impossible for the driver riding alone to thread the end of the tape through a machine. For another tape in reels was bulky and awkward and when the music was finished it had to be rewound.
What was needed was a tape playing machine more convenient than any tape playing machine ever built using tape in a convenient to handle form as convenient for example as a phonograph record.
It was pointed out to Bill Lear that some other people had been thinking along those lines like the Radio Corporation of America Columbia Broadcasting Zenith Radio Magnavox and every other major and minor corporation involved in the business of proving music to the public.
They had spent millions of dollars and thousands of engineering hours and all they had come up with was the present state of the art which was to say stereo phonograph records and stereo reel to reel tapes.
There had been some experimentation in tapes playing them slower but there had been no success whatever in getting satisfactory fidelity from tapes moving at a slow speed. For decent fidelity no more than two programs could be placed side by side on the standard quarter inch recording tape.
And then there was the insurmountable problem with tape. After you played a stereo (two channel) tape from one reel to the other it had to be rewound.
A colorful Californian Earl Muntz (once known as “Mad Man Muntz” the used car dealer) had as early as 1962 developed a tape cartridge. This was an endless loop of tape encased in a plastic holder. Tape was fed from the inside of the spool past the playing head and then wound on the outside of the spool.
This struck Lear as a step in the right direction. What was needed now was engineering. The cartridge idea would have to be vastly improved and a completely reliable tape player sturdy enough for the bounces and shocks it would get mounted in a car would have to be developed.
Lear turned to Motorola for co operation. Both Lear and Motorola had come a long way from their early days of sharing the building with the Midwest Slipper Company at 847 Harrison Street. Motorola assigned an engineer Oscar Kusisto to the project.
Like Lear Kusisto possessed a rare ability to see to the heart of a problem and then come up with a simple solution. The first thing that Kusisto and Lear decided was that they would go with the continuous loop of quarter inch tape. They reasoned that while the cassette tape had merits (it was smaller than a cartridge could be simply because the tape in a cassette was Vs inch or half as wide) it also had disadvantages. The narrower tape wasn’t as sturdy as the wider tape for one thing and there were other considerations.
The next thing they decided was that Motorola (which is to say Kusisto) would develop the playing mechanism and that Lear Jet Stereo (which is to say Lear) would develop an absolutely reliable cartridge a more difficult job than it appears.
The first design criterion they decided on was that the tape would have to have eight channels of information twice what the Muntz tape cartridge had. Only in this way could they get enough music in each cartridge to make the cartridge practical.
What Lear did to make the tape cartridge what it is today is something that only highly skilled engineers (both electronic and plastic) can really appreciate. It wasn’t simply a question of making a device that would reliably pull a continuous loop of tape at a constant speed.
That was difficult enough in itself and got him involved in such things as lubricants for the tape which would make the tape just so slippery and no more slippery and which would neither dry out losing their slipperiness or come off the tape and make things that shouldn’t be slippery the traction wheel for example slippery. He also had to make a device that cost next to nothing to manufacture (so that it could compete with phonograph records which are really nothing more than a couple of cents worth of plastic ) and which could be manufactured by the millions. This meant he had to design not only the cartridge itself but the machines which would make the cartridges as well.
Oscar Kusisto while Lear was spending much time and vast amounts of money developing a reliable cartridge was spending many engineering hours and vast amounts of Motorola s money developing a reliable playing mechanism.
What he had to do was design a machine that (a) would turn itself on when a cartridge was inserted; (b) pull a continuous loop of tape at an absolutely precise 3VA inches per second (otherwise the music would sound horrible); (c) detect from two thin strips on the tape (each Vz2 inch wide) information which could be amplified with fidelity almost as good as the phonograph provided; (d) shift from one set of 132 inch wide strips to three other sets (in turn ) of strips and then back to the first set ( thus providing eight channels or four stereo programs ).
The machine that did this had to be rugged enough to be operated in a car wholly immune to both mechanical vibration and to hums buzzes and whistles generated by other electrical equipment in the car. (Actually because of wind and engine and other noises inside a car the passenger can’t really hear sounds below say 100 or 150 Hertz nor above about 7000 8000 Hertz.
Some 8 track cartridges and playing equipment however can reproduce sound from about 20 Hertz to 20000 Hertz which is to say both lower and higher than the human ear can detect. ) By the fall of 1964 Kusisto and Lear had a new ally RCA. RCA said that if Motorola marketed a decent 8 track tape player RCA would make tapes available using the artists from RCA’s large stable.
Then in October 1964 Lear and Kusisto went to Henry Ford II. They hoped that Ford would be impressed enough with this new gadget to order it placed in the normal production system. Both knew that it took at least two years and more often three before a new item appeared on a new model car. It took that long to get anything new into the system. What they hoped Ford would do would order his production department to include the tape player in the 1968 Fords which would go on sale three years from then in the late fall of 1967.
Henry Ford II however recognized a good thing when he saw it. And unlike his counterparts at other manufacturers he didn’t have to bother making proposals to be put to a vote after due deliberation by one committee or another.
“We’ll shoot for July 1965” Ford said. That was nine months away. “I want the tape player available as an option on all 1966 Ford passenger cars from the Lincoln down to the Mustang.’’
Three separate engineering teams were set up. The first team was charged with getting the tape player into the 1966 Ford whose plans and assembly techniques had been “closed” for almost six months when the decision was made to include the tape player. (After a certain date “development is closed” and no further changes to a “new” car are supposed to be permitted short of making changes when the engine falls out for example.)
The second separate engineering team was charged with finding out what could possibly go wrong with the tape player once it was installed and to arrange for the necessary changes to either the tape player or the car itself. The third separate team was charged with developing the tape players for the 1967 and later cars.
The 1966 Ford models came out with the tape player as an option and the option proved enormously successful among buyers at all price levels. (There was probably a moral in its success for those who see beauty in radio commercials but it was lost somewhere.)
By the end of the year tape players were available for dealer installation from Chrysler’s MOPAR parts division and by the end of the year it was announced that all American manufacturers (plus Volkswagen of America) would offer tape players as a factory installed option for 1967 model automobiles.
During 1967 every record manufacturer in America went in the tape making business. (To be sure many of the smaller record companies hired the larger ones to manufacture their tapes for them but by the same token the larger record manufacturers produce records under other people’s labels too.)
The tape player business mushroomed. In 1972 450000 units were installed in new cars at the factory and 3000000 units were installed by either dealers or people in the electronics equipment business.
Many of the units are made in Japan. Motorola players are made in Japan by Alps Electric Company for example. Alps and other manufacturers ship one million units a month to the United States.
For the record companies this was something of a mixed blessing. They had spent vast amounts of money developing the cassette tape players primarily because it is easier (and cheaper) for them to manufacture prerecorded cassettes than prerecorded cartridges. Now people wanted the convenience of playing their auto tapes in their homes as well and the enterprising Japanese were quick to make 8 track players (and recorders) available for the home. A massive advertising campaign boosting cassettes appears to have failed to convince people that cassettes are either as good (in terms of fidelity) or as convenient (most often they have to be rewound or at least turned over) or as durable. (The 8 track tape is twice as wide and less prone to twist or get stuck.)
Next up according to people who should know is four channel music which gives the listener the feeling that he’s in the middle of the orchestra. Lear doesn’t appear very interested in this. So far as he is apparently concerned that is a problem which has been solved.
What really was wrong with the automobile Lear realized was the engine.
An internal combustion engine was inefficient dirty and polluted the atmosphere. What was needed was obviously something else. Lear was told that General Motors and Ford and Chrysler and Fiat and Mercedes Benz and everybody else had spent billions of dollars and come up with nothing much of an improvement except maybe the Mazda engine which uses a rotor instead of pistons.
Lear was unimpressed. What was needed he said was an external combustion engine maybe powered with steam. And where is Bill Lear these days? Every morning he gets in one of his cars (he has many; he likes cars and with a net worth last estimated at $100000000 and more coming in every day he can afford to indulge his fancy) and turns on the radio (designed by his old friend Paul Galvin) and then shoves in a Lear Jet Stereo Eight cartridge and drives to what used to be Stead Air Force Base Nevada.
It is now the laboratory and testing ground of Lear Engineering which says it is developing the greatest auto accessory of them all a whole new concept of engine.