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Rear View Mirror: Highway Hi-Fi

For as long as people have been driving, they’ve been looking for ways to entertain themselves while doing so. Conversation was one possibility, but since many drivers are guys, it’s likely that a search for other options soon followed. The earliest and longest tenured of these driving diversions is radio. In recent times, the over-the-airwaves broadcasts have been joined by hundreds of satellite channels. But, as with television, the sheer volume of selections is no guarantee that you’ll find anything worthwhile. The desire to personally select the soundtrack for one’s road trip led to the development of a series of devices over the years. Many drivers today plug their iPod or media player into their car’s sound system. Before iPods, CD players were the preferred packaging for mobile music. CD’s were preceded by cassettes, and previous to that, 8-track tapes. Earlier still, we had record players. No, really – there once were record players in cars.