RadioActive wrote:

They started by making batteries. They morphed into the very first ever car radio. It was 1928, and people barely owned cars let alone radio sets. But two entrepreneurs saw a future in dashboard listening, even if they weren't exactly in a dashboard. 

You probably never heard of the Galvin Manufacturing Corporation, but they called their new fangled invention "motor," after the thing that powers the car, and "ola," after the Victrola, the world's first record player. We remember it today as Motorola, although it's long out of the car radio biz.

You'd not only have to have had a lot of money to afford a car back then, but more moolah to put a radio in it - the average model cost $750, equal to $2,800 today. 

But thanks to those inventors, we now enjoy the must have feature in every car. And they couldn't possibly have known what they created back then would dominate dashboards for decades to come.

The First Car Radio Maker 

$750 in 1928 would be equivalent to more than $14,000 today

Didn't they have shortwave radios in cars at one point?