I was asked a question a few days ago which was quite a simple one: When did they start putting radios in automobiles?

I did some checking and as far as I can determine, firms and entrepreneurs were experimenting with car radios as early as the mid 1920s.

There would have been some sort of local interest in radio as CFCO was in existence as early as 1919.

In researching the issue I found that an early participant in the manufacture of the devices was a firm known as Galvin Manufacturing of Schaumburg, Ill.

Paul and Joseph Galvin were to be among the first mass producers of car radios.

In 1947, the name of their firm was changed to Motorola.

I remember, as a youngster, my parents had a cottage on the Rankin cut at Mitchell’s Bay and in the cottage next west to theirs lived a retired police constable named John Baptist Cheff who was a veteran of the First and Second World Wars as well as one of the last of the old County Constables who were replaced by the OPP In 1931.

J.B. owned a Motorola television, black and white, and I was not quite sure if it was a portable or a console model; I thought that it did have an odd shape to it.

Televisions, in those times, were not the flatscreen versions of today – they had huge picture........

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