The inventor of the automotive alternator, Wavering also helped develop the first commercially successful car radio and led the effort to produce the radio the Apollo astronauts used to communicate with Earth from the moon.
“The radio may have made the car fun,” he once said, “but the alternator and the switch from positive to negative grounded systems made everything else possible.” Most notably, the “everything else” included air conditioning. Wavering, who spent most of his working life at Motorola, was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame in 1989. He died November 20 at age 91.