The development of in-car entertainment – or ‘infotainment’ systems, to use the modern buzzword – has taken a giant leap forward in recent years, although it’s possible to trace the roots of the concept back over a century. In 1922, Chevrolet fitted a cumbersome, expensive and frankly very impractical radio into a car. The idea worked well, provided you were located within around 100 miles of a broadcasting station and didn’t need to take many passengers, as its large batteries and speakers took up plenty of room in the cabin. It wasn’t until the 1930s that we’d see the first widely available in-car consumer radio system resembling something more like that which we know today.
One of the pioneers of the new technology was Motorola, known then as the Galvin Manufacturing Corporation, named after American engineer, Paul Galvin. The Motorola name actually hails from the obvious: ‘Motor’ for ‘motor car’, while ‘rola’ is a shorted version of the name of phonograph manufacturer, Victrola. When the Galvin Corporation purchased a company specialising in battery eliminator technology, it was able to adapt this for vacuum tube radios, allowing them to
