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2024-10-22 12:44:47 UTC
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PermalinkMichael Valentine, 74, Who Helped Drivers Stay Under the Radar, Dies
An engineer who loved to drive fast, he helped build an industry-altering
device that made its debut after the national speed limit of 55 m.p.h.
became law.
By Richard Sandomir
Published Oct. 19, 2024
Updated Oct. 21, 2024
Michael Valentine, an electrical engineer, loved to drive fast in his MGB
sports car. But in 1974, after a national highway speed limit of 55 miles
per hour was mandated as a fuel conservation measure, he believed that a
“holy war” had begun: speed-seeking drivers against police officers trying
to snare them with radar guns.
“In a holy war, you can take either side and be right,” he told The
Cincinnati Enquirer in 1981. “The problem,” he said, “is that police radar
is an electronic device of fallible character in the hands of ordinary
human beings.”
Mr. Valentine, who didn’t believe that road safety was determined by
finite speed limits, went into battle armed with the Escort, a radar
detector that he built with Jim Jaeger, his college friend and business
partner, for their company, Cincinnati Microwave.
They met with early success. In 1979, a year after the Escort’s debut, Car
and Driver magazine tested 12 radar detectors and ranked it the best, “by
a landslide,” for its ability to pick up the signals of police radar
equipment.
The rave catapulted sales. In early 1981, Cincinnati Microwave had sold
50,000 Escorts, Mr. Valentine said.
He never stopped upgrading the Escort, and, after parting ways with Mr.
Jaeger in 1983, he designed two generations of detectors at his own
company, Valentine Research.
After Mr. Valentine’s death at 74 on Sept. 16, Road & Track magazine
lamented the loss of “one of the great saviors of speed.”
“We all owe Michael Valentine a great thanks for his commitment to the
auto enthusiast community,” the magazine added. “And, probably, some of
the cash we’ve saved on tickets, too.”
Mr. Valentine’s wife, Margaret (Kreutzberg) Valentine, said he died at his
home in Cincinnati from an aneurysm.
Michael David Valentine was born on Oct. 28, 1949, in Dayton, Ohio, and
grew up in nearby Vandalia. His father, James, was a mechanical engineer;
his mother, Lillian (McPhee) Valentine, oversaw the home. Mike’s father
bought him a ham radio, and he got his amateur radio license at 14.
At the University of Cincinnati, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in
electrical engineering in 1973, he met his future wife, who later became
his partner at Valentine Research.
In addition to her, he is survived by his daughters, Martha Johnson and
Anna Valentine; three grandchildren; and four sisters, Kathy Valentine,
Cheryl Valentine, Sandra Paulsel and Nancy Lowe.
One of Mr. Valentine’s first jobs was selling electronic components. He
approached a few radar-detector manufacturers, including Electrolert,
which made the popular Fuzzbuster radar detector, about buying a component
that would enable their devices to actively seek radar signals, rather
than passively receive them.
They all turned him down. Dale Smith, the founder of Electrolert, told him
that the component would make the Fuzzbuster too expensive and that
consumers wouldn’t buy it.
“He was quite unreceptive, and that it is quite understandable,” given how
much money Mr. Smith was making on the Fuzzbuster, Mr. Valentine told The
Plain Dealer of Cleveland in 1983.
So Mr. Valentine and Mr. Jaeger built one themselves. Car and Driver’s
obituary of Mr. Valentine quoted Mr. Jaeger as recalling that they had
disassembled a Fuzzbuster and “were amazed at how primitive it was.”
“There was almost nothing inside,” he said. “Mike and I started noodling
about how to build a superior, cost-no-object detector.”
“We were a good team,” he added, “with Mike very good at signal
processing, while I was good at the radio frequency technology.”
He formed Cincinnati Microwave in 1976 with his father and Mr. Jaeger.
The first Escort sold steadily until the Car and Driver review, which
called it “the next best thing to buying a judge.” The volume of orders
ramped up so quickly that it caused a seven-month backlog in deliveries.
In 1983, a disagreement over marketing and a plan to go public, which Mr.
Valentine opposed, led Mr. Jaeger to buy him out. While waiting for a
five-year noncompete clause to lapse, Mr. Valentine and his wife started
Valentine Research.
Mr. Valentine finally introduced the Valentine One radar detector in 1992.
“I had ideas,” he told Road & Track in 2020. “I wasn’t finished yet. It
was like stepping off a fast-moving train. I looked at the ones going by
and wanted to get back on.”
Mr. Valentine made numerous upgrades to the Valentine One over three
decades, including one that featured antennas for radar signals coming
from ahead and behind and arrows that showed the direction of inbound
police radar signals. In 2020, he introduced a new detector: the V1 Gen 2.
Mr. Valentine told Road & Track that he tested multiple prototypes of the
new device on the windshield of his Porsche Panamera Turbo S E-Hybrid.
Car and Driver’s testing this year ranked Mr. Valentine’s Generation Two
the second-best overall but the top one for its detection distance. The
review also called it the “most chatty” — the detector would beep if the
setting weren’t activated to eliminate the alerts — which it said could be
a nuisance to some drivers, although it added that “others might
appreciate the peace of mind from knowing this thing won’t miss a sniff of
any radar.”
Mr. Valentine said he had no desire to stop improving his detectors.
“I think I was just the guy that was meant to do this,” he told Road &
Track in 2020, adding, “I don’t know how else to say it.”