On September 26, 1928, work first began at Chicago's new Galvin Manufacturing Company with five employees in one-half of the first floor of a rented building. It would be in under this company where businessman Paul Galvin and a group of inventors would change the way Americans ride in automobiles forever.
Galvin's career, a Illinois native, attests to the statement, "If at first you dont succeed, try, try again." He actually started his business ventures years before founding the Galvin Manufacturing Company. In 1921, two years after returning home from World War I, Galvin along with his friend Edward Stewart started a storage-battery factory in Marshfield, Wisconsin. However, the factory did not last long at all due to location and high shipping costs, going out of business only two years later. The two tried to establish their battery business again, this time in the prospering city of Chicago in 1926 but that too would go out of business soon after. Fortunately before their bad luck, the partners formed a way for home radios, a popular object in the 20s and 30s, to draw power from an electrical wall outlet calling it the dry battery eliminator. The head of Sears and Roebuck encouraged Galvin to re-establish himself in business of making the eliminator so that Sears and other companies can buy them. It wasn't long before Galvin bought back the eliminator part of his bankrupt company and went back into business, establishing the Galvin Manufacturing Company. However, Galvin's attention would soon shift to the car-radio business after the manufacturing company was barely surviving more on the repair of eliminators than the sales of them.
The first car radios, actually portable "travel radios" powered by batteries, were priced at $250 a piece, an equivalent to $2800 in present day dollars. This was very expensive to the average driver in the 20s. Galvin figured if he can obtain a way to mass produce affordable car radios, he could be rich. The company began to prosper after producing small AC sets for sale to multiple business firms. However, Galvin tried something new and enlisted the help of Elmer Wavering and William Lear, who later invented the eight-track cartridge system held standard in all Ford vehicles during the late 60s, to retrofit his Studebaker with a radio. They all would drive a whopping 800 miles to the Radio Manufacturers Association's annual meeting in Atlantic City, park outside the convention, and turn the music all the way up in hopes of drawing patrons to order their latest creation. A few came through. Galvin sold his radios at the price $110, enough to break even for the year. In 1930, he would change the company's name to Motorolla and car radios became the cornerstone of the company's early success.
