Although William Lear’s name is associated closely with the jet he designed in the 1960s and marketed successfully to corporate executives, he also made two other significant contributions to society—the car radio and the eight-track tape. The former continues to affect people’s lives, while the latter mushroomed in popular use in the late 1960s and early 1970s before fading out into oblivion, the technological equivalent of bell-bottoms. Lear also made a host of other inventions, including a universal radio amplifier, the first reliable aeronautical radio compass, and an automatic pilot system that locks into a radio signal.
William P. Lear was born on June 26, 1902, in Hannibal, Missouri. When he was still young, his family moved to Chicago, where he attended public school through the eighth grade. He was only 16 when the United States entered World War I, so he lied about his age to enlist in the U.S. Navy. In the service, he learned radio electronics, one of his fields of specialization thereafter. When the war ended, he learned to fly while working as an airplane mechanic at Grant Park Airport back in Chicago, and aviation became another of his fields of specialization.
In 1922, Lear founded Quincy Radio Laboratory, the first of his many companies. Within two years, he had invented the company’s first major product (and the first of his many inventions)— a practical and affordable car radio, the first of its kind, However, sales were not his strong suit, so in 1930 he signed his rights over to Paul Galvin, president of the Galvin Manufacturing Corporation, which marketed the "model 5T71" radio at about $120 for installation into most car makes. Galvin later dubbed the radio the "motorola" (a combination of "motor" and "Victrola"), the name the company adopted in 1947.
In 1934, Lear invented the all-wave radio receiver, which he sold to the Radio Corporation of America. RCA installed this radio amplifier in its entire line of radio products, a testament to the universality of Lear’s design. In 1939, Lear formed Lear Inc. to manufacture aircraft instrumentation, and he subsequently founded Lear Corp. and LearAvia Corporation to fill contracts amounting to more than $100 million with the U.S. military during World War II.
In 1940, Lear invented "Learmatic Navigator," an automatic pilot system that locked into a radio signal as a means of steering the airplane. In recognition of the importance of this invention, Lear received the Frank M. Hawks Memorial Award. After the war, Lear refined his miniature autopilots for fighter jets, and he invented the first fully automatic landing system. For this last achievement, he won the Federal Aviation Administration’s Collier Trophy, which President Harry Truman granted him in 1950.
In 1962, he demonstrated the first ever completely blind landing of a passenger flight on a French Caravelle jetliner, a feat honored by the French government. Also in 1962, he sold his 23 percent interest in Lear Inc. for $14.5 million, which he used to fund the founding of Learjet Inc. This company fulfilled his vision of marketing small jets to corporate executives for comfortable and convenient air travel, freeing them from commercial airline schedules and hassles. On October 7, 1963, the first Learjet took off, leading immediately to yearly sales of $52 million. By 1975, 500 Lear-jets had been delivered, making it the model of choice for the corporate world.
In the early 1960s, Lear invented eight-track tape technology—a continuous magnetic tape loop with four stereo programs running simultaneously on eight parallel tracks. The Ford Motor Company installed eight-track players in its cars, thus fueling popularity in eight-track sound for a short time, until the fad wore off and other technologies replaced the eight-track in the popular imagination.
By the time Lear died, on May 14, 1978, he had received about 150 patents. Posthumously, he was inducted into the International Aerospace Hall of Fame (in 1981) and the National Inventors Hall of Fame (in 1993). Interestingly, Lear believed in the eventual development of "tele-porting" technology, akin to "beaming" on Star Trek, whereby a person could travel across time and space. He also believed in UFOs and provided explanations rational enough to make the Pentagon nervous.
