ONE OF THE WEEKLY NEWS MAGAZINES recently carried a full page advertisement for a Motorola AM/FM Multiplex radio and Stereo Tape Player. There was a picture of an attractive young couple in a car her head on his shoulder smiles on both their faces as they raced down a highway somewhere listening to either the AM radio the FM Multiplex radio or the music from an 8 track tape cartridge player.
There was a double picture of the device itself one picture showing it with the tuning dial and the controls and the other showing a hand inserting the 8 track tape cartridge. The clever design permits the tuning dial to be pushed aside as the cartridge goes into the machine. The whole device is no wider than the spread of the fingers on a hand.
The advertisement provided that self satisfied glow that comes when someone knows something more than the uninitiated. The research for the material on that most popular of automobile accessories the radio with tape player had been done by and I knew the stories behind that advertisement two men Paul Galvin and Bill Lear. It’s one of the more fascinating stories not only concerning the automobile but of this American society of ours which truly permits hard working hardheaded young men to grow vastly rich and successful by doing something other people tell them is absolutely impossible.
Paul Galvin invented the automobile radio and a host of other things. Bill Lear after having invented a host of other things invented the 8 track tape cartridge player mostly because somebody told him it couldn’t be done.
The story goes back like the story of the automobile to the early years of this century when another complicated device destined like the automobile to really change people’s lives came 011 the scene. It was called “radio” and it took its name from the scientific principle involved in radiating energy carrying “intelligence” through the atmosphere without wires. It was almost called the “radiator” but someone had already usurped that name to describe a hollow cast iron device used to heat rooms with steam.
The first radios transmitted simple bursts of energy which could be detected by a receiving device. By coming up with short and long bursts of energy it was possible to send messages down wires. Radio was first called “wireless telegraphy” and that name lasted until we learned (courtesy of Thomas Alva Edison and Alexander Graham Bell) that it was possible to transmit the sound of a voice by using a pile of carbon granules as an incredibly sensitive on and off in microseconds switch or microphone. Since it was no longer “wireless telegraphy” it was obviously “wireless telephony” which was too much of a mouthful. It became (and to some extent remains in Great Britain and what used to be the British Empire) “the wireless” but that sounded sort of odd to the American ear and “radio” came into common use.
The first really practical use of radio was to get messages to places where there could be no wires from shore to ship and from ship to shore. The most dramatic example of the value of radio came on April 14 15 1912 when the “un-sinkable” S.S. Titanic on her maiden voyage from England to New York struck an iceberg about 95 miles south of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland and sank. She had carried 2224 passengers and crew; 1513 of them died.
Her radio operator had flashed an S O S (dit dit dit dah dah dah dit dit dit) the international distress signal and the radio equipped S.S. California only twenty miles away could have come to her rescue. But the California carried only one radio operator and he was asleep; the California didn’t learn of the tragedy until he woke up hours later. Twenty minutes after the Titanic went down (the last sound the survivors heard before it was drowned out by the roar she made when turning over was the ships orchestra playing “Nearer My God to Thee) the S.S. Carpathia arrived at the site. Her radio operator had been awake heard the SOS and the Carpathia rushed to the scene not quite making it in time to do much good.
Even before she began picking up survivors the Carpathia’s radio operator had flashed word of the disaster to the United States. By personal direct order of the President of the United States every radio transmitter in the United States was ordered off the air so that a radio operator in New York City could get details of the disaster and names of the survivors. The radio operator was a Russian immigrant a young man named David Sarnoff who by the time he died was Brigadier General Sarnoff U. S. Army Reserve Retired president and chairman of the board of the Radio Corporation of America which among other things owns the National Broadcasting Company.
After the Titanic disaster laws were passed making the round the clock services of a radio operator mandatory aboard ocean going ships. Sarnoff went back to work as an engineer for the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company of America and four years later in 1916 proposed to his employers that they start sending music and news over the radio free of charge and go into the business of making small “radio music boxes” for sale so that people could hear the free “broadcasts.”
Sarnoff was politely told (after all he was a hero following the Titanic disaster) to go back to his dials and switches; radio’s future was as an improved form of telegraphy and nothing else. Fortunately for the rest of us he chose to ignore that solemn advice.
Sam-off’s proposal came ten years after the first “broad cast” (the word meant sending signals in all directions [broadly] rather than directionally) had been made in America. O11 Christmas Eve 1906 amateur radio operator R. A. Fessenden of Brant Rock Massachusetts had sent two musical selections a short talk the reading of two poems and the greetings of the season “out over the airwaves.”
The first Christmas broadcast had been heard by ship’s radio operators within a two or three hundred mile radius of Brant Rock.
Two years later in 1908 the American genius Lee De-Forest (who was more than any other man responsible for the invention of television) made a successful broadcast from the Eiffel Tower in Paris. In 1910 he set up a 500 watt transmitter at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York and broadcast the voice of the greatest opera singer of all time Enrico Caurso. Except for the fact that it was the first time that had been done it was almost an exercise in futility because there were very few radios around at the time and the people who heard that first “radio star” could probably have been all gathered together in a small room.
But the idea was born and there were people all over the country who could see an incredible future in broadcasting. “Getting into radio” moreover cost a good deal less than “getting into automobile.” What few parts were required to build your own radio transmitter and receiver with which you could transmit your voice hundreds of miles and hear somebody talk back to you cost far less than buying a car.
World War I saw the U. S. Army Signal Corps begin to experiment with (and actually use) radio. The Signal Corps trained large numbers of young men in the technology and when they took off their uniforms many of them became radio amateurs.
By 1920 a highly respected member of both the business and scientific communities Dr. Frank Conrad of the Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company decided there were enough people “out there in radio land” to justify the expense of broadcasting to them. Station KDKA in Pittsburgh went on the air on the evening of November 2 1920 and started a tradition of public service that the American people have since come to demand from broad casting. KDKA s first night on the air was primarily dedicated to reporting the returns of the Harding Cox presidential election.
By the end of 1921 there were eight “broadcasting stations” on the air. There were probably no more than 3000 receivers in the United States when KDKA made its first broadcast. Within two years there were 300000 and by 1926 half a billion dollars worth of radios (ranging in price from a crystal set selling for under $10 to enormous devices which didn’t work much better selling for several hundred dollars ) were being sold each year.
At about this time Paul Galvin entered the picture. He was born in the farming community of Harvard Illinois. His father was that nearly standard accessory in a small mid western town the Irish Saloon Keeper. In 1914 the year that World War I began in Europe the towns dries had their way voted in prohibition and put him out of business.
Paul Galvin was then in college. When his father could no longer contribute to his education he became a drop out in 1916 after two years. He frankly admitted that he didn’t think he was smart enough to get through college while simultaneously holding down a job.
He first took a job as a clerk in the Harvard railroad station and then swapped that for another clerk’s job with Commonwealth Edison in Chicago. He didn’t like that much either and when the opportunity came to go to Army Officer’s Training School (a forerunner of Officer’s Candidate School) at Fort Sheridan he jumped at it.
He was commissioned into the artillery as a second lieu tenant and eventually assigned as the “radio officer” of the 131st Field Artillery Regiment. His training in the theory of radio communications was minimal just enough to have him know which switch to push and when but Galvin was fascinated with radio for two reasons. The mechanics of it delighted him. He was intrigued with the notion that man could put together a battery a coil of wire and some other pieces and be able to talk over great distances. And now that he was actually doing it himself standing out in the rain supervising the erection of an antenna or sitting in the radio shack with the earphones on his head radio was no longer quite so mysterious no longer the private property of geniuses in an ivory tower.
Galvin went to France in a troopship attacked by submarines on the way over and became an artillery forward observer the man who goes out with the very first line of infantry and sometimes ahead of it to direct the fire of the cannon miles to the rear. There was no such thing as a portable radio in those days; the most rapid communication was by telephone. That meant stringing telephone wire by hand often under fire. Men charged with laying telephone wire or those who laid it themselves such as forward observers who couldn’t wait for the wireman to show up had very high casualty rates higher even than infantrymen but Galvin came through the war unscratched.
Like some other young artillery officers he came out of the war with a heightened sense of purpose patriotism and comradeship for those who had also been to France.
In a letter home Galvin wrote “American manhood is bound to be better for this experience. Previous to this so many thousands of us had no previous purpose in living this has broadened us and given us a purpose in life.”
Another poor Midwesterner who won a commission and served as an artillery officer in France was similarly moved. At his specific instructions no international VIP received an invitation to the private funeral rites of President Harry S. Truman until every member of Captain Truman’s World War I battery of artillery had been invited and his final twenty one gun salute was fired by his old battery flown to Independence Missouri for his final military formation.
Galvin left the Army in 1919 got married and found a job in Chicago working for a manufacturer of storage batteries. In 1921 together with Edward Stewart he formed the Stewart Galvin Battery Company in Marshfield Wisconsin. About all he and Stewart had been a good deal of enthusiasm very little money and the public support of the Marshfield Chamber of Commerce.
It wasn’t quite enough: The Marshfield Herald reported on August 2 1923 “Monday afternoon the office equipment and factory supplies of the defunct Stewart Galvin Battery Company were placed on sale by government officials to secure payment of unpaid taxes.” Galvin got into his broken down car with his wife his ten month old son and his total cash resources a dollar and fifty cents. An employee of the bankrupt company wanted to go to Chicago and he paid for his ride; the Galvin’s ate on that money on the way to Chicago.
In a move pretty close to charity he got a job with the Brach Candy Company primarily because Mr. Brach’s wife a strong minded woman happened to be Paul Galvin s aunt. Stewart meanwhile had gotten some more money from his father and moved what could be salvaged from the Stewart Galvin Battery Company disaster to Chicago.
Radio by 1926 was booming and Stewart was for the moment making money manufacturing batteries for the 5000000 battery powered radios then in use across the country.
But the future was not bright. Engineers had developed radios which could use alternating current from a socket in the wall; the days of the battery powered radio were obviously numbered.
Stewart thought he had at least a partial solution the trickle charger. This was a device that plugged into the wall and fed a trickle charge of electricity to a battery keeping it charged. The battery would then power the radio.
It would Stewart thought have a market because most of the 5000000 battery powered radios were no more than a couple of years old and people would prefer to buy a trickle charger which would do away with their batteries rather than throw away the whole radio just to get one that could be plugged in.
Galvin and Stewart went back in business together with Galvin this time a junior partner. Hopes soared again because the trickle charger when tested in the shop worked just fine. They could make it easily and cheaply and turn a nice profit. They had in rather glowing terms guaranteed their device and then they had to make good their guarantee when the trickle chargers came back to them from customers; they didn’t work nearly as well or at all in use as they had worked in the shop.
A new battery replacing device was designed (largely by a bright young engineer named Dwight Eddle-man) and put into production. One step ahead of their creditors they somehow arranged to get to see General Robert E. Wood then the president of Sears Roebuck and Company and demonstrated the new battery replacing rectifier. Getting to see Wood at all was a major accomplishment and Wood seemed impressed. He sent the rectifier to his testing laboratory (Sears’ testing laboratory employed five times as many people as Stewart & Galvin) and told them he’d be in touch after the reports came in.
The two partners had been trying to raise some operating capital by taking in a third partner. This fell through and that was all their many creditors had to hear. The Cook County Sheriff arrived padlocked the premises and nailed a sign to the door announcing the sale of the company s assets to pay unpaid bills. Before the auction could actually take place a substantial offer was made for the storage battery part of the business and that was sold leaving only the battery eliminator business to be auctioned off.
At that point there was a call from Sears. The head of the Radio Department called and said the tests had indicated that the battery eliminator was up to Sears’s standards and if an order was issued now how soon could Sears expect delivery?
Galvin swallowing both his humiliation and disappointment had to report that the business had been padlocked.
The man from Sears didn’t seem particularly upset and suggested that Galvin try to raise the money to buy at auction the battery eliminator idea and what parts there were. Sears would buy enough of the devices to make it worth his while.
But there was no money. Galvin’s Brother Joe who didn’t have any money either came to help. They went up and down the business section of Chicago and found enough radio and furniture stores who would take the battery eliminator if it was available to permit Galvin to borrow a thousand dollars.
That stretched his credit to the breaking point; there was simply no more money available from anyone anywhere. If the bidding for the battery eliminator (and the few tools and parts to make it) went to $1001 Galvin was out. He went to the auction with his brother Joe and Les Harder who had been the stockroom boy. Harder’s function should Galvin be able to buy the battery eliminator idea was to make sure he didn’t buy anything that wasn’t needed.
Bidding started at $100 and rose in fifty dollar jumps. When the price reached $500 Galvin took a chance. He was afraid that the bidding would move fifty dollars at a time slowly past $1000 which would put him out of business. On the other hand if he gave the impression he had money and was determined to buy the business whatever the price he just might scare off less determined bidders. “Seven hundred and fifty dollars” he called in a loud and he hoped confident voice.
After a slight pause the battery eliminator was “Going going gone to Mr. Paul Galvin for $750.” The company started with three employees Paul Galvin his brother Joe and Les Harder from the stockroom. It was called grandly the Galvin Manufacturing Company.
The next problem was to find a home for the Galvin Manufacturing Company. There were $250 left from the original borrowed $1000 and between them Paul and Joe Galvin had parlayed the fact that the company now had assets (the plans for the battery eliminator and a small stock of material) into additional borrowed capital $565 more.
At 847 Harrison Street in Chicago was a six story building whose only distinguishing feature was its water tower slightly larger than other water towers in the area. There were a few small businesses in the building. Half of the first floor was occupied by the Midwest Slipper Company for example and part of another floor was occupied by the Radio Coil & Wire Company another electronic enterprise cast in the mold of Galvin Manufacturing Company which is to say that its major stockholder and frequently sole employee was one man. The man’s name was Bill Lear.
Radios in those days had at least one coil. Coils were tubes (or either paper or some sort of ceramic) around which wire was wound or coiled. The Germans dominated the manufacture of the fine wire (called “Litz wire”) used to wind coils to the point where everybody knew that attempting to manufacture it economically in the United States was out of the question.
Everybody but Bill Lear who started to make his own Litz wire and made it well and profitably, moreover to develop a market for his wire Lear obligingly designed radios free of charge for radio manufacturers each radio designed so that it had to use a coil made by the Radio Coil & Wire Company Bill Lear proprietor.
Lear was just getting started when Paul Galvin approached the owner of the building at 847 Harrison Street told him he needed space but there was no sense in signing a year’s lease: Either the Galvin Manufacturing Company would stay in business which meant they would need a place to be in business and would pay the rent or they would go broke and if they went broke there wouldn’t be any money to pay the rent whether or not there was a lease.
They were told they could have half of the first floor sharing it with the Midwest Slipper Company and they went to work. They built their battery eliminators selling most of them through Sears and the rest to anyone owning a radio store who could be convinced to take any number from one up terms cash.
Then they went into the business of manufacturing “private label” radio sets a relatively simple 9 tube device onto which they would put any name anyone happened to want.
It has been said (denied by Galvin’s company and neither admitted or denied by Bill Lear) that at least some of the design of the first Galvin radio came from Bill Lear. If indeed Lear did design the circuit he didn’t get paid for it; it was probably a case of the fertile mind of Lear being available when it was needed.
The Galvin Manufacturing Company staggered through 1927 1928 and most of 1929 until the stock market crash of November 1929 reached Harrison Street as well as most of the rest of the country. When the crash came, the major manufacturers of radios (in those days primarily Atwater Kent and Zenith) needed cash in a hurry. They put their name brand sets on the market at a lower price than Galvin could make them. And then as now nobody was going to buy an unknown brand of radio when a well known radio was on sale and for less money.
At this point Galvin decided to make an automobile radio. There were those that felt that for a company on the edge of bankruptcy this wasn’t what could be called a wise decision. First of all there was no certainty that any significant number of people wanted radios in their cars. Secondly with the depression there was serious doubt that anyone could afford an automobile radio even if one were available.