Starting a radio repair shop in his home, which he could tend nights, Lear enrolled at Tulsa Central High School, taking eight solids, heavy on the math.

Lear had been an "instructor in wireless" in the U.S. Navy so he confidently identified himself as a radio engineer to Clifford Reid in Quincy, Illinois.

[citation needed] In 1924, he moved to Chicago and built a B-battery eliminator for the Universal Battery Company with R. D. Morey.

Bill Grunow of the Grigsby-Grunow-Hinds Company topped that offer when Lear fixed a problem with 60,000 B-battery eliminators that they had manufactured.

He came up with an invention in 1924 when power inverters installed at Stevens Hotel failed to perform for the Radio Manufacturers' Association.

Tuning coils in the radio frequency stage of a set were rather large; Lear reduced their size by using Litz wire, braided from many fine strands to create a large surface area, giving it high conductivity at radio frequency.

Lear borrowed $5,000 from his friend Algot Olson to build machines to wrap the strands, braid the wire, and wind the coils.

The industry was set up in the basement of his mother's old house on 65th street, and run with assistance of Don Mitchell, a railroad electrician.

Galvin and Lear mulled over names for the product on a cross-country trip and came up with "Motorola", which was a portmanteau of "motor" and the then popular suffix "-ola" used with audio equipment of the time (for example "Victrola").

The challenges of aerial navigation led Lear into the development of radio direction finders and avionics products.

[5] Lear developed radio direction finders, autopilots, and the first fully automatic aircraft landing system.

The company rebranded again in 1944 to Lear, Incorporated and in 1949 opened a manufacturing facility in Santa Monica, California.

[7] During the brief existence of SAAC, King Michael I of Romania met Lear and agreed to work as a test pilot for the Swiss part of the company.

The first Lear Jet was sold in 1963; it could carry eight passengers at 560 mph and cost about $650,000 fully equipped (equivalent to $6,468,913 in 2023), about $400,000 less than its competitors at the time.

[11] The idea was to design an executive aircraft which would bring together a supercritical wing with Lycoming's new turbofan engine.

[13] Although Canadair took up its option, Lear eventually realized that the Canadians had simply been interested in using his reputation and skills at promotion to penetrate the market.

The 8-track was a commercial success that provided good audio quality and was easily adapted to vehicle and home use.

[19] In 1968, Lear started work on a closed circuit steam turbine to power cars and buses.

It used a proprietary working fluid dubbed Learium, possibly a chlorofluorocarbon similar to DuPont Freon.