Radio Boom

First automobile radio on record was built in 1922 by one William Lear of Quincy, Ill., who sold it to a doctor from Kahoka, Mo. The doctor drove all the way to Los Angeles and back without tuning in anything, later found that the power plug had been put in backwards. First regular factory production did not come until 1927, long after cabinet sets had squealed their way permanently into the U. S. Home. Through 1927 a modest score per day were built by a little concern now a subsidiary of Philco Radio & Television Corp., biggest U. S. radio makers.

Until 1930 radios in automobiles were scarce as scarabs and just as expensive. But in that year sales shot up to 34,000 sets, more than trebled in 1931, and two years later were up to 724,000. Sales volume was at last diluting price and beginning to float the automobile radio off luxury heights. Producers cut prices further, watched 1935 sales bounce to more than a million.

In a field where accessories often outsell salesmen, this phenomenal boom did not escape the alert eye of General Motors Corp. Last week GM bought Crosley Radio's automobile radio division at Kokomo, Ind., announced that, at additional cost, it would install radios as initial equipment in new cars. Hitherto General Motors cars, like many another make, have been built to take receiving sets should the customer buy one as an extra. No newcomer to radio, General Motors some years ago made home sets in a short-lived venture which was liquidated in 1933.

Speed of the automobile radio boom is clocked by the fact that the industry is now talking hopefully of a 1936 production of 2,000,000 sets compared to an estimate of more than 4,000,000 for household units. Since about 4,500,000 cars will probably be sold this year, nearly one out of every two may carry a radio as naturally as a spare tire.

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