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Quote of the Day: Edwin Armstrong
I thought Armstrong would invent some kind of a filter to remove static from our AM radio. I didn’t think he’d start a revolution—start up a whole damn new industry to compete with RCA. – David Sarnoff
Edwin Howard Armstrong has been called “the most prolific and influential inventor in radio history.” He took the concept of regeneration, first used by Lee DeForest, and solved the known problems with “super-regeneration.” When the U.S entered World War I, Armstrong became a Captain in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, helping develop radio communications for the Allied war effort. During this period, Armstrong worked on superheterodyne radio receiver circuits, which are still in use today. He was also the prime inventor of wideband Frequency Modulation (FM) systems, including FM (88 – 108 MHz) broadcasting. Like with the inventor of television Philo T. Farnsworth, Armstrong would have to contend with “General Sarnoff.”
Unlike the modern Research and Development laboratories in large corporations, in the early part of the 20th century there were many individual inventors like Marconi, Edison, Lee DeForest, etc. Like many creative engineers, Armstrong would need significant financial backing to see his designs being used commercially. And in the 1920’s, the Radio Corporation of America (RCA) was the major company developing radio (and later television) systems. In 1922, Armstrong sold his super-regeneration patent to RCA for $200,000 plus 60,000 shares of stock. Armstrong also developed a simpler, less costly superheterodyne design with RCA Engineers, which was introduced in 1924 radio sets. This technology was considered so valuable that RCA would not license the superheterodyne to other companies until 1930.
In early 1928 Armstrong began slowly researching wideband FM, discovering significant advantages over narrowband FM. He was granted five U.S. patents on wideband FM on December 26, 1933. In June 1936, Armstrong gave a formal presentation of his new system at the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) headquarters in Washington, D.C. He played a jazz record using an AM radio, then switched to FM transmission. Several engineers said that Dr. Armstrong’s invention was one of the most important radio development since the early earphone crystal sets used before tube radio receivers.
Based on his agreements, Armstrong had to give RCA the right of first refusal to his designs. Since RCA had significant investments in AM transmitters and receivers, Sarnoff hope there would be a simple circuit to add to the AM receiver. For over a year starting in May 1937, Armstrong conducted field tests of FM from the Empire State Building in New York City. The tests showed FM worked up to 80 miles, but RCA was too focused on television to develop FM.
In 1940, RCA offered Armstrong a $1,000,000 royalty-free license to use his FM patents. Armstrong felt this was unfair to the other licensed companies, which had to pay 2% royalties. RCA countered by conducting its own FM research and encouraged other companies to stop paying royalties to Armstrong. In 1948 Armstrong filed suit against RCA and NBC for patent infringement and for “impairing the value” of his invention, requesting treble damages, although his primary patents expired in late 1950.
On the morning of February 1, 1954, Armstrong’s body was discovered outside River House in Manhattan. He had removed the window air conditioner from his 13th floor apartment and jumped to his death. David Sarnoff disclaimed any responsibility, saying that “I did not kill Armstrong.” After his death, a friend of Armstrong estimated that 90 percent of his time was spent on litigation against RCA. The days of the lone brilliant inventor seem to be over.
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Of course not. One hires muscle for that sort of thing.
Awesome! This is why I read Ricochet.
He didn’t kill that Epstein person, either.
A great post. For Ricochet newcomers (and welcome!) Vectorman’s a pro who knows radio inside and out. After WWII, FM was one of the areas, like radio facsimile, where great future growth was expected, but the FCC did something stupid, almost fatal to FM: they reassigned it from its prewar frequencies to a wholly different frequency band. It made every existing FM radio obsolete, and so infuriated owners that many did not spend the money to buy a new set for 88-108 megacycles. FM got killed right there, and for 20 years it was a zone for classical and educational stations, and simulcasts of successful AM stations. It took FM stereo, and rock and roll, to make it profitable finally.
To give the lame-o FCC more defense than it deserves, Edwin Armstrong’s FM-only network, which did get a good start before the war, was stagnant, and its desirable (relatively) low frequencies coveted by others ready to use them.
But here’s where it could have been different. FM could have been shifted to a more modestly sized band right above the one they had, the one cleared when the FCC dropped TV’s channel 1. Existing radios could still have tuned the top of the old band, and all FM stations easily moved to that narrow strip, with the understanding that when FM growth finally expanded the frequency band upwards, the old radios would finally have to be adapted or traded in.
Thank you Gary for adding this additional info, and you’re correct. In many respects, General Sarnoff was the model for present day titans like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, who use government influence to get what they want, including destroying those that created the wealth.
Sarnoff was the original Steve Jobs. He was only in the content business because he was in the hardware business. As Apple music sustained the iPod, NBC and RCA Victor records sustained RCA Radios (and later television) and Record Players. That need to protect the hardware end is what separated him his only real rival at the time, CBS’ Bill Paley.
Paley tried to get into the TV manufacturing business in 1950s and lost his shirt (an inflation-adjusted $55M shirt.)
As for the eventual suicide of Edwin Armstrong, it is less an indictment against Sarnoff than the American court system. It rewards the deepest pockets, not those that are in the right.
CBS also tried to convince the FCC on field-sequential color television approach, which needed a converter to the black-and-white TV set, along with an external mechanical color wheel. RCA was able to show an all electronic color system that was backward compatible to the original NTSC monochrome system. The method RCA developed was absolutely brilliant.
(@garymcvey, IIRC, I thought you had a post on the CBS system but couldn’t find it)
I agree that the whole patent system has gone through remarkable changes in the 20th century. For example, there were patent sharing structures in WWI and WWII so that war materials could be produced rapidly without interference from lawyers.
The color wars between CBS and RCA/NBC are the background of a Ricochet Silent Radio fictional story, Everything’s Better in Color, and color TV in general was covered in a TV history post.