Test your knowledge: When was first car radio introduced?
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THERE ARE a few key elements to the perfect road trip: the ideal car, entertaining friends, a map of the best watering holes en route and, of course, a simmering soundtrack.
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These days the hip kids are pumping out their tunes from the car stereo via their mobile phones, thanks to Bluetooth connections and super-fast mobile internet streaming, but once upon a time an in-car wireless radio was considered the height of hi-tech.
Some amateur radio enthusiasts experimented with such devices in the earliest days of radio broadcasting (see above) but what was the first commercially-available car radio, and in what year was it introduced?
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The Galvin Corporation of Chicago, USA is credited with introducing the first commercial car radio, in 1930. Company founders Paul and Joe Galvin used the name “Motorola” for their in-car devices, which was a compound of “Motorised” and “Victrola” (a popular brand of phonograph).
The Motorola 5T71 sold for between $110 and $130, or $1,563-1,848 (£1,073-1,269) in today’s prices. Importantly, it could be installed in the most popular cars of the time.
Crossley was the first UK car maker to offer a factory-fitted wireless radio, from 1933. The example shown above is a Volkswagen unit from 1939.
In 1952 Blaupunkt became the first maker to offer FM receivers.
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