EDWIN HOWARD ARMSTRONG

Edwin Howard Armstrong

Edwin Howard Armstrong

Introduction

One of the extraordinary but not widely known tales of American invention is the story of FM or frequency-modulation radio. No major invention of recent times has had a longer, harder, more heroic struggle for existence than this system of high-fidelity broadcasting. Today [1969], some 35 years after its conception, FM finally has won legal and historical vindication of such magnitude as to lay to rest any doubts as to its authenticity and great worth. This is a fitting occasion, therefore, for reissuing this life of the inventor, which was first published shortly after his despairing death by suicide in 1954, and which is now brought triumphantly up to date(Lewis 1991).

The Houck Collection

On May 15, 1923, opening day of RCA's Radio Broadcast Central, Armstrong couldn't resist climbing the tower atop the RCA building. FM was conceived about 1933 by Edwin Howard Armstrong, a noted professor of engineering at Columbia University and a recognized genius in electronic circuitry. He had contributed to early radio two basic circuits, the regenerative or feedback circuit and the superheterodyne, which are still at the heart of nearly all modern radio-television transmitters and receivers. When he sought permission in 1935, however, to erect an experimental FM station to demonstrate the unusual qualities of his new radio system, he ran into a stone wall. The Federal Communications Commission dismissed FM out of hand as "a visionary development," and denied him a permit. The standard radio networks operating on AM or amplitude modulation were equally indifferent. "Who needs a second method of broadcasting?" they said. It took Armstrong nearly five years to get his experimental station constructed, after threatening to take his invention to a foreign country. Though FM proved to be as remarkable a new system of broadcasting as its inventor claimed, still, for nearly another quarter of a century, it was blocked by one regulatory device or another from reaching its free, full-throated development(Gary 2010).

What sustained FM through these years of commercial opposition and regulatory complicity was the fact that it was indeed a superior system of broadcasting, aurally and technically, to all who had ears to hear. The most striking demonstration, then as now, was to hear an FM program coming in crystal clear through a clatter of thunderstorms and electrical disturbances that turned ordinary radio reception into a nightmare of shattering discharges and steady background noise like frying eggs. In addition to its noise-suppression qualities, the wide-swinging FM wave also was capable of carrying the full frequency range of sound perceptible to the human ear, giving it a depth and naturalness unknown to ordinary AM radio. Over the years, these qualities attracted a constantly growing band of discriminating listeners and dedicated FM broadcasters, the most persevering of which came to form the National Association of FM Broadcasters to promote FM's independent development(Burns 1992).

Vindication for FM

By 1960--tragically too late for the inventor to witness it--the tide began to turn for ...