Car Radios

I know, I know, what's a car radio? Now we listen to our IPods, CDs, or our Bluetooth cell phones. But before all that, there was the basic car radio. In 1930 two brothers, Joe and Paul Gavin, developed the first commercial car radios that could run on battery power. At the time, people liked using the suffix "-ola" to name their new products, and so you had the Victrola, and a juke box called the Rock-Ola. Joe and Paul, having stretched their imaginations as far as they could, called their car radio the Motorola. Seriously, as in Motor-ola.

Today Motorola employs 60,000 workers and last year generated over $36 Billion in revenues worldwide. It manufactures cell phones, microprocessors, walkie-talkies, and cable TV receivers. When Roscoe Bartlett was born, it didn't even exist.

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