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For the most part, the history of radio and some of the interesting
facts about how radios work can be fun to read and write
about. Sometimes, however, the darker side of radio's past
looms large. Such is the case with the story of Edwin Howard
Armstrong. Armstrong's innovative mind led him to three
of the most significant inventions in the history of radio
and electronics. It also led him into a fight he just couldn’t
win. Here's a brief account of his story.
While Lee De Forest was working on his Audion at AT&T, Armstrong, then a
young undergraduate at Columbia University in New York, was just about
to make his first impact on the future of electronics. In 1912, during
his third year at Columbia, Armstrong discovered a way to improve the
reception qualities of De Forest's Audion: a regenerative circuit.
By feeding a radio transmission's waves back through the Audion tube,
Armstrong boosted his radio's reception, and in so doing, created the
first radio amplifier. Armstrong also noticed that if he repeatedly
cycled the electromagnetic waves (of the radio signal) through the
tube, the tube itself would begin to act as a transmitter. With this
breakthrough, radio stations would no longer have to rely on large,
expensive generators for their transmitters. Armstrong had entered
the annals of radio history.
The success of young Armstrong's regenerative circuit prompted De Forest
to claim that he had invented it himself. De Forest pushed his case
through the U.S. Patent Office, and lost. But he was persistent, and
eventually maneuvered his case against Armstrong through federal courts
and finally to the U. S. Supreme Court. There, in a decision that still
upsets historians, scientists and radio engineers alike, a U.S. Supreme
Court Judge apparently misunderstood the case before him, and actually
ruled in favor of De Forest.
Undeterred by the Court's decision, Armstrong kept working and inventing. During
World War I, Armstrong followed up his discovery of the regenerative
circuit, with the superheterodyne receiver. That's quite a mouthful.
In simple terms, the superheterodyne receiver is the mechanism in a
radio that lets you choose between stations -- the radio tuner. Another
success for Armstrong, and another entry into the annals of radio history.
His third significant invention, however, would ultimately lead to
his demise -- as it pit a single man against a very determined corporation,
RCA.
In 1934, Armstrong succeeded in something his contemporary scientists
had dismissed as outright impossible. He'd managed to send a static-free
signal on the Frequency Modulation -- Armstrong had invented FM radio.
RCA was not happy. In the years before Armstrong's invention of FM,
RCA had gone out of its way to become the major force in U.S. radio.
They'd bought the radio patents from Westinghouse and AT&T, and were
about to make a serious commitment to Television. The advent of a new,
static-free form of radio with higher fidelity signaled a technology
RCA just wasn't interested in grooming for the future. RCA would rather
have stuck to TV and AM.
For the next several years, and into Armstrong's untimely, and sad demise,
RCA put up obstacles to his invention of FM and his ability to reap
any financial rewards from it. RCA encouraged the FCC to block Armstrong's
experiments with FM; they contested his patents with the U.S. Patent
Office, and they refused to work with him on expanding FM technology.
All the while, RCA started putting FM receivers into their television
sets -- using Armstrong's invention, but refusing to acknowledge his
role.
The attorney fees of fighting RCA and the cost of maintaining his own lab
at Columbia eventually bankrupted Armstrong. Finally, overwhelmed by
the shadows cast over his own life as an inventor and as a troubled
husband, Armstrong walked out of his thirteenth story window in February,
1954. By then, FM had surpassed AM, and RCA had become an ultimate
powerhouse in the electronics industry. RCA eventually paid Armstrong's
wife, Marion, a settlement of just over a million dollars. And so one
of the more somber threads of radio history came to an end.
You can learn more about Edwin H. Armstrong, his inventions and his life,
by visiting the Armstrong
Memorial Research Foundation. There you'll find a list of books
on Armstrong as well as an outline of his life.
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see what we can do. Good-bye for now, Carlos. About
the author.
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