Motorola, Inc. () was an American multinational telecommunications company based in Schaumburg, Illinois. It was founded by brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin in 1928 as Galvin Manufacturing Corporation and was renamed Motorola in 1947. Many of Motorola's products had been radio-related communication equipment such as two-way radios, consumer walkie-talkies, cellular infrastructure, mobile phones, satellite communicators, pagers, as well as cable modems and semiconductors. After having lost $4.3 billion from 2007 to 2009, Motorola was split into two independent public companies: Motorola Solutions (its legal successor) and Motorola Mobility (spun off), on January 4, 2011. Motorola designed and sold wireless network equipment such as cellular transmission base stations and signal amplifiers. Its business and government customers consisted mainly of wireless voice and broadband systems (used to build private networks), and public safety communications systems like Astro and Dimetra. Motorola's home and broadcast network products included set-top boxes, digital video recorders, and network equipment used to enable video broadcasting, computer telephony, and high-definition television. These businesses, except for set-top boxes and cable modems, became part of Motorola Solutions after the split of Motorola in 2011. Motorola's wireless telephone handset division was a pioneer in cellular telephones. Also known as the Personal Communication Sector (PCS) prior to 2004, it pioneered the first mobile phone with the Motorola DynaTAC in 1983, followed by the more compact MicroTAC and the clamshell StarTAC in the 1990s. It had staged a resurgence by the mid-2000s with the RAZR, but lost market share in the second half of that decade, as the company's one-hit wonders were not enough to reinstate Motorola as a leader. Later it focused on smartphones using Google's Android mobile operating system, the first released product being Motorola Droid in 2009. The handset division was later spun off into Motorola Mobility.
History Galvin Manufacturing Corporation was founded in Chicago, Illinois (at 847 West Harrison Street) in 1928 to make a battery eliminator. Paul Galvin wanted a brand name for the company's new car radio, and created the name "Motorola" by linking "motor", (from "motor car"), with the "ola" suffix, (from "Victrola"), which also alludes to other brand names with similar suffix, e.g. Pianola, Moviola, and Crayola. The company sold its first Motorola branded radio on June 23, 1930, to Herbert C. Wall of Fort Wayne, Indiana, for $30. The Motorola brand name became so well known that Galvin Manufacturing Corporation later changed its name to Motorola, Inc., in 1947. Galvin Manufacturing Corporation began selling Motorola car-radio receivers to police departments and municipalities in November 1930. The company's first public safety customers (all in the U.S. state of Illinois) included the Village of River Forest, Village of Bellwood Police Department, City of Evanston Police, Illinois State Highway Police, and Cook County (Chicago area) Police. Many of Motorola's products have been radio-related, starting with a battery eliminator for battery powered radios (during the burgeoning electrification of rural homes), through the first handheld walkie-talkie in the world in 1940, defense electronics, cellular infrastructure equipment, and mobile phone manufacturing. In the same year, the company built its research and development program with Dan Noble, a pioneer in FM radio and semiconductor technologies, who joined the company as director of research. The company produced the hand-held AM SCR-536 radio during World War II, which was vital to Allied communication. Motorola ranked 94th among United States corporations in the value of World War II military production contracts. Motorola went public in 1943, and became Motorola, Inc. in 1947. At that time Motorola's main business was producing and selling televisions and radios.
Post World War II
The last plant was listed in Quincy, Illinois at 1400 North 30th Street where 1,200 employees made radio assemblies for homes and automobiles. In 1969, Neil Armstrong spoke the famous words from the Moon on a Motorola transceiver: "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind". In 1973, Motorola demonstrated the first hand-held portable telephone. In 1974, Motorola introduced its first microprocessor, the 8-bit MC6800, used in automotive, computing, and video game applications. The 6800 is the basis for the more popular MOS Technology 6502 which was made by former Motorola employees. That year, Motorola sold its television business to the Japan-based Matsushita – the parent company of Panasonic. In 1980, Motorola's next generation 32-bit microprocessor, the MC68000, led the wave of technologies that spurred the computing revolution in 1984, powering devices from companies such as Apple, Commodore, Atari, Sun, and Hewlett-Packard.
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