July 9, 2025 • 33 mins
Edwin Howard Armstrong isn’t exactly a well-known inventor, but his work in radio literally changed communications around the globe. But his most famous invention – FM radio – became a source of constant frustration after he developed it.
Research:
- Armstrong, Edwin H. “Frequency Modulation and Its Future Uses.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, vol. 213, 1941, pp. 153–61. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/1024069
- Armstrong, Edwin H. “Personalities in Science.” Scientific American, vol. 154, no. 1, 1936, pp. 3–3. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/26144367
- “First public radio broadcast.” Guinness World Records. https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/381969-first-public-radio-broadcast
- “FM Inventor Dies in Fall.” The Patriot News. Feb. 2, 1954. https://www.newspapers.com/image/1094174282/?match=1&terms=%22Edwin%20Howard%20Armstrong%22
- Lessing, Lawrence P.. "Edwin H. Armstrong". Encyclopedia Britannica, 14 Dec. 2024, https://www.britannica.com/biography/Edwin-H-Armstrong
- Lessing, Lawrence P. “Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong.” Bantam. 1969.
- Lessing, Lawrence P. “The Late Edwin H. Armstrong.” Scientific American, vol. 190, no. 4, 1954, pp. 64–69. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/24944524
- “Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers, Volume 5.” Institute of Radio Engineers. 1917. Accessed online: https://books.google.com/books?id=YEASAAAAIAAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s
- “Radio Broadcast.” Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1922-1930. https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=iau.31858044013914&view=1up&seq=277
- “Telephoning Without Wires.” The Fort Wayne Journal Gazette. Oct. 20, 1907. https://www.newspapers.com/image/29125618/?match=1&terms=audion%20%22de%20Forest%22
- Tsividis, Yannis. “Edwin Armstrong: Pioneer of the Airwaves.” Columbia Magazine. April 1, 2002. https://magazine.columbia.edu/article/edwin-armstrong-pioneer-airwaves
- Turner, H. M. “Dr. Edwin H. Armstrong, Edison Medalist.” The Scientific Monthly, vol. 56, no. 2, 1943, pp. 185–87. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/17796
- “What’s the Difference Between AM and FM Radio?” National Inventors Hall of Fame. Aug, 16, 2023. https://www.invent.org/blog/trends-stem/difference-between-am-fm
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
So I'm a little bit on an inventor kick again
at the moment, So yah, get ready for more in
the coming weeks. Today's inventor is somebody I stumbled across
and I kind of marveled at having never heard of
him because he worked in a field that I have
studied many of the other people. Little did I know
that I was walking into a hotbed of science, legal drama.
(00:40):
And then I got excited, But then I got bummed
because I also was way too deep into this one
to switch gears when I discovered the very very bummer
part of this story. So we are going to give
a trigger warning as we approach that very bummer part.
And as usual, it's not something we're going to linger
on or spend a lot of time on. But there
is a death by suicide in this episode. So Edwin
(01:04):
Howard Armstrong is not exactly a well known inventor, but
his work in radio literally changed communications around the globe.
I think we could also say we might not have
our jobs if he didn't do what he did, Yeah,
because we work for a company that does a lot
of radio. His most famous invention, which was FM radio,
(01:25):
became a source of constant frustration for him though after
he had developed it. So we're going to talk about
various inventions. We will give some basic layman's explanations, but
in terms of breaking them down in terms of how
they work at the nitty gritty level. If you want that,
you got to go somewhere else for it. I'm sorry.
And as we'll see in the course of the story,
(01:46):
people not understanding the way things work scientifically, and particularly
electrical engineering and radio, caused a lot of problems for
Armstrong in his life. Edwin Howard Armstrong was born to
Number eighteenth eighteen ninety in New York City in the
Chelsea neighborhood. His father, John, worked in publishing for Oxford
(02:07):
University Press, and his mother, Emily, had been a school
teacher until she married John. Like a lot of kids
born in the late nineteenth century, Edwin was fascinated by
all the modern technology around him, particularly as a child
growing up in Manhattan, where a lot of the latest
technology quickly found a lot of use He loved trains
(02:29):
and just about anything mechanical. His family moved to Yonkers,
New York when he was fourteen. He was always really
curious about science and scientists, but it was the news
of the first wireless message sent across the Atlantic by
Italian physicist Gulielmo Marconi that really got Armstrong excited and
set him down what would be his path in life.
(02:52):
Edwin Armstrong was so inspired by Marconi's invention that he
decided that he too, wanted to invent the things. Edwin
was a shy kid. Also, I should point out that
I have seen some biographies that referred to him as Howard,
which was his middle name. I don't know which he
went by. We're going by Edwin just because that is
his first name. We may be incorrect in that, but
(03:14):
he was either way a shy kid, and he readily
became absorbed in electrical and radio projects that he could
work on on his own. He apparently turned the family
attic into like his own lab, which he used for
years and years. Because unlike a lot of kids, he
did not lose interest in these efforts, and he did
not move on to other things. He retained his passion
(03:35):
for tinkering and discovery his whole life. He did do
other things as a teenager, like he played tennis, but
the drive to invent that was ever present. He built
crystal sets so basic radio receivers up in that attic
that could only pick up Morse code. There was really
nothing else for them to capture, and the weak's signal
(03:55):
that he was able to get on those crystal sets
made him intent that he should figure out how to
boost it.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
After finishing his studies at Yonkers High School in nineteen
oh nine, Armstrong enrolled at Columbia University in the Engineering School.
Part of the reason he went to Columbia was that
it was close to home, he could commute to school,
and he wouldn't have to break down any of his
ongoing experiments and projects that were underway in the family's attic.
(04:23):
Radio in particular, had become a big focus of Edwin's
curiosity and work. He noted later of choosing to concentrate
his energies in this field. Quote somehow, for reasons I
cannot recollect, the decision favored wireless. Now, of course, radio
in nineteen oh nine was not really a thing in
the sense that we would consider it Now, this is
(04:45):
when telegraphy and Morse code were still kind of at
the forefront. No one was sending sound across airwaves, but
they were very close. The first radio broadcast happened on
January thirteenth, nineteen ten, when an inv named Lee DeForest
broadcast a week signal from the New York Metropolitan Opera
house of Enrico Caruso singing. So not only was radio
(05:09):
an entirely new concept for Armstrong to jump into, but
some of its most exciting developments were happening in the
city where he was working on his own projects and
going to school. DeForest had invented a device called an
audion in nineteen oh six, and he patented that in
nineteen oh seven. The audion was a radio tube DeForest
(05:31):
had built on work that had been in process for
a while to get this tube to work. It consisted
of a cathode filament, an anodeplate, and a wire that
sat between the two. If you look at a photograph
of one of the first audions, you'll see what looks
like a light bulb with wires coming out of it.
The current between the filament and the anodeplate could be
(05:52):
modulated using that wire. Called a grid and that could
amplify sound. And while it worked, it did not work great. Additionally,
DeForest is sometimes described as having arrived at his invention
strictly through experimentation. He didn't really have a firm enough
grasp on the electrical science at play to explain why
(06:14):
this worked.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
This is going to come up again later. But here's
the thing. Edwin Armstrong did understand the science, or at
least he was determined that he was going to figure
it out. This time in Armstrong's life was written about
by J. H. Moorcroft in nineteen twenty two in an
article titled What Everyone Should Know about Radio History. The
(06:36):
section on Edwin includes the following quote. He was not
an especially brilliant student. In fact, in many of his
courses he did rather poorly. The writer knows because Armstrong
was one of his students. The characteristics of alternating current
machinery in general did not prove very enticing to the
young student, not because he was lazy or indifferent, but
(06:58):
because he had a hobby and a vision. He was
experimenting at his home with wireless apparatus and trying to
find out how the three electrode audion of DeForest worked.
If DeForest confessed in public that the action was too
mysterious for him to explain, then Armstrong would explain it
for him, which he promised to do and did very shortly.
(07:20):
That very shortly was no joke. Edwin had it all
figured out when he was still a college student. He
was able to invent a circuit that created much more
robust amplification. Armstrong had figured out during school break that
he could run a signal through the audion and then
back into its input to create what he called positive feedback.
(07:42):
His resulting circuit was called a regenerative circuit, sometimes also
called a feedback circuit, and it worked by a reported
factor of thousands. Then Armstrong realized that if he turned
his regenerative circuit to its highest level of amplification, it
became an oscillator and its own waves in or the words,
it was a broadcasting transmitter. This early success had been
(08:07):
made possible in part by Armstrong's mentor, a man named
Michael Pupin, who was a professor in the electrical engineering
department and who had seen something really special in Armstrong.
Poupin had allowed the student to use his lab. He
had recognized the reasons that the regular curriculum failed to
interest Armstrong, and he was also Edwin's champion when it
(08:29):
came to other professors at school and administrators who thought
he was just being arrogant or that he wouldn't apply himself.
Coming up, we'll.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Talk about Armstrong's first hurtle of many in his career,
and that was paying for a patent application. But first
we will take a quick sponsor break.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Naturally, Armstrong wanted to file a patent now application for
his invention of this circuit, and he asked his father
for help with the money for the application fee, but
John Armstrong refused, voicing concerns that he didn't want his
son to get sidetracked from finishing his education. Edwin was
really disheartened by his father's response, but he was also
(09:19):
an undeterred. He just turned to other family members and
even friends for money, and he promised that he would
repay them for any financial help they could offer. And
then he also had to sell his bike that was
how he commuted to school. But to him, all of
this was worth it. He filed his patent application in
nineteen thirteen, the same year he graduated from Columbia. Armstrong
(09:43):
was immediately offered a position as an assistant at Columbia,
and as an employee, he was able to install a
large demonstration antenna on campus to show Poopen and others
just how powerful his regenerative circuit was. He reportedly picked
up signals from as far away Hawaii with it.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
During World War One, Armstrong's reputation in the science community
landed him in Paris, where he worked for the US
Army Signal Corps. In a lab there in Europe, he
invented another circuit, the superheterodyne radio circuit, also called a superhead.
A superhead circuit changes a radio signal frequency from the
(10:22):
frequency it's received at to a lower frequency using a
mixer and oscillator. This results in an output that can
be more effectively filtered and processed. In terms of war applications,
this meant that weak signals could be cleared of background
noise and amplified. Armstrong had been allowed to use the
Eiffel Tower as part of his experimentation. Today, the superhead
(10:45):
is still a massive part of daily communications all over
the globe. In nineteen fourteen, Armstrong received his patent, but
the very young Armstrong did not have a lot of
time to be happy about it before he found that
he had a much older detractor of his work in
Lee DeForest. DeForest had actually seen one of Armstrong's demonstrations
(11:07):
and had seen how Armstrong's work had made his audion
truly function as an amplifier, but in his opinion, that
meant that he DeForest should be the one to get credit.
For a decade and a half, these two men would
go back and forth in papers, public statements, and after
the war lawsuits over who should get credit for inventing
(11:28):
the regenerative circuit. DeForest's argument was that from the beginning
he had heard what he described as a howling sound
in his audion, and he realized after seeing Armstrong's demonstration
that he had accidentally created positive feedback. This assertion was
not really supported by any of DeForest's own writing about
(11:51):
his invention. Prior to having seen Armstrong's work, he never
made any notes about a howling noise or mentioned it
to anybody, But he decided that he also needed to
file patent applications for what he claimed was his invention.
This resulted in Armstrong's patent being held in stasis for
a while as things were hopefully going to get sorted out.
(12:13):
But they did not sort out. They got a lot
more contentious.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
So recall that DeForest had publicly stated that he couldn't
really explain how his audion worked, and Armstrong, on the
other hand, had completely grasped the science he had. As
this rivalry was heating up, written papers about how his
regenerative circuit worked and changed the function of the audion.
There are pages and pages of back and forth between
(12:40):
the two men in the proceedings of the Institute of
Radio Engineers, after Armstrong had published a paper titled a
Study of Heterodyne Amplification by the Electron Relay. In one letter,
DeForest states, quote, I doubt if the simplicity of mister
Armstrong's explanations of audion phenomena is satisfying to those who
(13:00):
have extensively experimented with the audion. He then goes on
to reference a number of behavioral phenomena of the device
that Armstrong's work cannot explain, but they seem kind of
like outliers or malfunctions, including one where all of the
electrodes became incandescent. He then writes, quote, these are experimental
facts and not theory, and mister Armstrong must search more
(13:23):
deeply before the ultimate explanation of audion phenomena is revealed,
which honestly sounds like he almost thinks it's kind of magical.
He just does not understand what's happening, and he also
states that Armstrong was misinterpreting some of his writing. In response,
Armstrong wrote, quote in reference to doctor DeForest's discussion, I
(13:45):
feel that he must have failed in some way to
understand the present paper, because his discussion clearly seems to
apply not to the present paper, but to some of
the more fundamental and elementary matters which were published by
me several years ago. Part of a problem, he notes,
is that he Armstrong had backed another scientist, Fleming, when
(14:06):
DeForest had claimed that he had also infringed on one
of his ideas. It seemed that DeForest felt like everyone
was stealing his work. Things got really heated when the
AT and T company, which had purchased DeForest patents, got involved.
This is when the lawsuits began. Armstrong won some judgments
(14:27):
initially and then lost on appeal, and then additional suits
were filed and appealed, and on and on for fourteen
years from nineteen twenty to nineteen thirty four. This case
went before the Supreme Court twice. In testimony, it was
completely obvious to everyone that DeForest did not understand the
science behind his own invention the audion, But in the end,
(14:52):
a lack of understanding about the science and how it
was described in the patents led to the Supreme Court
justices ruling in faise of DeForest. That was something the
scientific community was outraged about.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Perhaps most damning for DeForest was the fact that the
Institute of Radio Engineers did not recognize the court's decision.
The organization had given their medal of honor to Armstrong
several years before the final court battle, but when the
decision came down, Armstrong attempted to return it during one
of the group's annual meetings. He was instead met with
(15:28):
a standing ovation and a refusal to accept that return.
The entire engineering community, and especially those who had worked
in sciences related to radio, backed Armstrong publicly. So DeForest
may have won that case, but he became an outcast
in his industry in the process. Armstrong continued to be
(15:50):
honored with awards for his work on the regenerative circuit as.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
All of this was playing out. After World War One,
Armstrong had gone back to Columbia. He worked for physicist
Michael Pupin as his assistant. Pupin, as we had mentioned earlier,
had been one of Armstrong's teachers, and Edwin had just
immense respect for him. Armstrong also sold the patent rights
for the superheterodyne receiver as the radio boom was beginning
(16:16):
in the nineteen twenties, and as a consequence, he found
himself very wealthy very quickly, with ongoing income from stock
that had been included in those patent purchase deals.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
He also got married after the war. While working in Europe,
Edwin met a woman named Marian McInnis. She was working
as the secretary of a man named David Sarnoff, who
was a friend of Edwin's from Columbia and would later
go on to found the Radio Corporation of America or RCA.
Armstrong gave Marion an early portable radio as a wedding gift,
(16:50):
and the two of them, by all accounts, were very happy.
Together with his newfound millionaire status, Armstrong could have retired
early and just lived a life of leisure at that point,
but he didn't. He was still fascinated with radio, and
he was chasing a goal, which was radio without static.
(17:10):
He used his own money to pay for research on
the problem, which he tackled along with his mentor Poopem.
He collected no salary from Columbia because he had worked
a deal where in working for free, he was able
to focus exclusively on his lab work and not have
to be bogged down in any of the trappings of academia.
That meant no administrative duties, no teaching schedules. In nineteen
(17:34):
thirty three, Edwin Armstrong applied for four patents, all related
to the issue of eliminating static from radio waves. Prior
to this point, all radio was based on AM or
amplitude modulation. In an AM broadcast, the frequency is constant.
This is also called a carrier wave. The sound wave
(17:55):
the audio that's being transmitted, is added to that frequency
and the sound wave changes the amplitude of the wave.
Amplitude is a measure of the strength or intensity of
a wave. Sometimes people will also call it a height,
but that's what they mean. So when you're tuning in
AM radio, you are tuning to the frequency that's assigned
to the broadcaster you wish to listen to. FM on
(18:18):
the other hand, modulates the frequency, so obviously FM stands
for frequency modulation. Those changes in frequency are what carry
the signal, and when they shift the output device that's
speakers get a hit of voltage that transmits the sound.
So a station's call number or frequency actually has some
play on either side of it to allow for those
shifts that trigger the sound. It is a more complicated process,
(18:42):
but the resulting sound is clearer an Armstrong's new system.
With the modulated frequency of waves, the carrier wave was
more impervious to interference from things like electrical storms.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
We know today that Armstrong's invention did change communications, but
initially it did not seem destined for success, and we'll
talk about why after we hear from the sponsors that
keep stuff you missed in history class going. One might
(19:19):
expect that the superiority in fidelity that Armstrong's FM radio
was able to produce would be readily embraced. It sounded
so much better, But there were two problems. One was
that there was a belief in the science community, based
on some faulty science, that FM was not viable. They
thought Armstrong had actually been wasting his time. The other
(19:41):
problem was that even once its viability was apparent. It
ran into the issue that new technology is often met
with resistance, especially when it necessitates the need for new equipment,
and that was exactly what happened with FM. To prove
his FM radio worked, demonstrated it to the Institute of
Radio Engineers in nineteen thirty five. That gave them a
(20:05):
chance to hear this static free transmission from the remote
location of Yonkers. He demoed different kinds of sound. There
was speaking, of course, but.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Also live music and things like water being poured into
a glass. It was all clear as a bell, much
clearer than an AM transmission.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
That resistance that we mentioned a moment ago two FM's
adoption came quickly and aggressively. By the mid nineteen thirties,
there were already a lot of radio stations broadcasting AM radio,
and none of them wanted word to get out that
there was a superior technology. Meanwhile, Armstrong was like, this
should be free to everybody. One of the early signs
(20:45):
that things were going to be really rough actually came
from his friend David Sarnoff. Saranov had started RCA at
this point, and Armstrong had promised RCA first look an
option for any inventions he created, and to help Armstrong
win his work, Sarnov had let the inventor use the
top of the newly completed Empire State Building as a
(21:05):
testing space. But when Armstrong started talking publicly about FM
radio and its benefits, Saranov told him to take his
equipment down and get off the Empire State Building. RCA
was already positioned against Armstrong legally at this point, the
company was involved in that series of patent cases against
him in court, but up until this point, Armstrong and
(21:29):
Sarnov had remained pretty friendly. Until the FM reveal.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Some of the resistance against Armstrong's new form of radio
was fairly specific to time and place. This was in
the nineteen thirties, so the Great Depression is part of
the context of this. Industry leaders like Sarnoff, who knew
that Armstrong was working on the static problem, had anticipated
(21:55):
that he was going to come up with something that
improved on the existing A radio technology, which was also
tied to the very new development of television. So when
he showed up with a completely new system, it took
people by surprise. Companies were trepidacious about investing when the
markets were precarious. They believed that customers would be even
(22:19):
less willing to buy things like new radios when there
were already plenty of AM stations for them to listen
to on their existing radios. So while there was a
lot of pettiness in the mix, there were also some
legitimate financial and economic concerns.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
In response to the mix of detractors and some people
who seemed to be just willfully ignoring his new tech.
Like he could not get people to write about this
new FM radio, Edwin Armstrong once again persisted he really
believed in FM and he knew it was far superior,
so he decided to build his own radio station to
(22:58):
prove it. Was of course very expensive. The total cost
of the construction, which took place over several years, was
estimated to have been around three hundred thousand dollars, which,
with that caveat that translating value over time is very imprecise,
the estimates put that at pretty close to seven million
dollars to day of his own personal money. And to
(23:21):
make matters worse, then, the Federal Communications Commission refused to
issue him a permit for it. In return, Armstrong told
the FCC that he would just move to another country
and let them lead the industry into static free broadcasting,
and after that he did get his license. In nineteen
thirty nine, he began broadcasting from the first FM radio station,
(23:44):
W two XMN, which he had built in Alpine, New Jersey.
Its signal traveled farther than the FCC had anticipated and
with clearer transmission than any AM station could manage.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
The next year, RCA offered to buy ALFE since from Armstrong,
but he was only willing to issue them a royalties
based offer, and things did not go well. As Armstrong
was ready to really start showing what FM could do.
The United States entered World War II. Because he was
still one of the foremost experts in the country regarding
(24:18):
wireless communication, he was once again needed for research duty
for the war.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Then, when the war was over Edwin returned to what
he considered his greatest achievement, FM, but things were only
getting worse in his battle to control the technology. After
he had turned down RCA's offer to buy a license,
the company had just gone right ahead and developed their
own FM technology without any sort of agreement with him,
(24:45):
and they actually brought FM radios to market, which was
something that violated his patents.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Then, the FCC, which had come to acknowledge the superior
fidelity that FM could provide, had assigned FM a new
set of frequencies at the end of the war, claiming
it was for the technology zone good. But this switch
meant that all the existing radios were suddenly obsolete because
they had been manufactured to tune into the old band.
(25:15):
As part of this move, the maximum power of the
new band was reduced from that of the old ones,
so one of FM's primary benefits was basically erased. Additionally,
corporate entities conspired to take down Armstrong's idea that FM
should stay independent and not be owned by a corporation.
(25:36):
Under the guise of promoting FM, RCA and other networks
started broadcasting the programming that had been running on AM,
but they didn't charge advertisers for their time on the
FM broadcasts. That meant that independent FM stations had no
real leverage to get advertisers to pay to run shows
(25:56):
on their channel. They were getting FM ads for free
from the big names already.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Armstrong tried to fight all of this in Congress, and
he had a number of politicians on his side. He
accused specifically RCA and NBC with infringement on his patents.
But though there were hearings, things dragged on with a
lot of mostly irrelevant questioning, and there didn't seem to
be any end or resolution in sight.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
As the nineteen fifties donned, the once wealthy Armstrong was
in a much less robust financial situation than he had
been earlier in his career. He had burned through his
fortune trying to convince established radio stations that FM was
a better option, and then to fight the many legal
battles that came with it. He and Marian had traditionally
(26:47):
held a party at Thanksgiving every year for all of
Edwin's engineering friends. After everybody had gone home, on the
night of the nineteen fifty three festivities, he and Marian
had a fight, something that was really unusual in their
thirty years together.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
The main crux of this argument seemed to be concerns
for their future in retirement. Maryan's sister and her sister's
husband had built a home in Connecticut on a farm,
and Marian wanted for Edwin to semi retire and for
them to also move to Connecticut. She had voiced concerns
that all of these legal battles and the radio station
and just all of it were draining what money they
(27:25):
had down to a point where this dream was kind
of slipping away. And after their argument in November nineteen
fifty three, she left their apartment and went to stay
with her sister, and the two of them remained apart
through the rest of the holidays.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
So heads up, we're getting to the death by suicide
that we mentioned at the top of the show, and
if you'd rather skip that, just jump ahead about three minutes.
By the beginning of nineteen fifty four, Armstrong was, it
is now believed, probably having a nervous breakdown. He had
started to act unlike himself, to the point that friends
were asking him if he was okay, and he told
(28:01):
them he was just under the weather. On January thirty first,
which was a Sunday, he spoke with his lawyer, Alfred McCormick,
as he did every morning. He checked in on a
friend whose wife was ill, and he made plans to
have drinks with another friend, but Armstrong no showed on
that date. Late that evening, he put on his hat
and coat and he jumped to his death from the
(28:21):
window of the couple's apartment the following morning. The news
was reported in a brief statement which circulated in numerous
papers and for several days after quote FM inventor dies
in fall. Major Edwin Howard Armstrong, sixty three, inventor of
the frequency modulation radio system, fell or jumped to his
death from the thirteenth floor apartment to the third floor
(28:43):
balcony of Riverhouse Apartment hotel today police reported. Police said
that Major Armstrong left a two page note addressed to
his wife, esther Marian, who was reported staying with friends
in Granby, Connecticut. The note, it was learned, expressed the
regret at dying this way and stated his love for
his wife. Major Armstrong also invented the superheterodyne and super
(29:05):
regenerative circuits, which are the basis of virtually all radio receivers.
Armstrong was buried in Marion's family plot in Merrimack, Massachusetts.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
They had also been married there in Marymack. In the
wake of her husband's death, Marion became a staunch defender
of the twenty one patent suits that he had filed.
Near the end of his life. The RCA and NBC
infringement suit settled out of court with the networks, paying
Armstrong's estate one million dollars. All of the other suits
(29:36):
ended in judgments in Armstrong's favor.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
On March sixth, nineteen fifty four, Armstrong's FM station played
the inventor's favorite music before a few closing remarks by
his lawyer, and then went off the air for good.
The Alpine, New Jersey, property where it was built was
eventually purchased by his alma mater and former employer, Columbia University,
which established the Armstrong Fields Stifle for Electronic Research there.
(30:02):
In addition to the lab, the building now houses an
exhibit of FM radio history. In nineteen fifty five, the
International Telecommunications Union made Armstrong one of its honorees in
recognition of his contributions to radio. One of their prior
honorees was the man who is often cited as inspiring
Armstrong's path as an inventor, Guglielmo Marconi.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
That's Edwin Armstrong.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Do you also have some listener mail? I do.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
It's less sad than that. At the end. This is
from our listener, Emily. Although I don't know it might
make me cry, everything does, Emily writes. So I've been
listening for a long time. I think I started listening
before the two of you were the co hosts, so
that tells you this note is a long time coming.
Thanks for everything, seriously, thanks. There are so many episodes
(30:54):
that I've loved and so much I've learned from you
guys over the years. I'm always excited when you do
an episode on some I've learned about in the past,
especially if it's a place I've actually visited, and I
assign your episodes for my literature students and my honors
students as supplements to the text for reading. Thank you
for being an educator, and also I'm super honored, she continues.
(31:15):
I often sit and think I should write because so
many of the episodes speak to me or to my
experiences in so many ways. But your recent episode on
the Library of Congress and your conversation about it on
the behind the scenes episode finally gets me to do it.
Like you, I am frequently absolutely dismayed at the state
of things in the US, and I'm often at a
loss for what to do. But your episode reinforced for
(31:37):
me the idea that education, particularly in the humanities itself,
is a form of activism. I do this at the
local level as a college professor, and you guys do
this for a much wider audience. Thanks for everything you do,
and know that you're not alone in feeling dismay, but
also in leaning into the importance of learning about the past.
And then we get to pet tax. Here are my dog, Elsa,
(31:58):
a two year old goldendoodle, and my sweet menace of
a kitten named Bertie. She chirps a lot. While that
is her official name, she gets called a lot of
other things because my five year old son likes to
change her name on a regular basis. She has been called,
among other things, all off, buddy, kitty, bouncy, and Wushi Coushie,
my son's name for whoopy cushions. Signed Emily, Emily, thank
(32:19):
you for this beautiful letter. It's so sweet and I'm
so honored. And also this dog. You guys got to
stop saying I don't know if I have dog fever
or what. Right now, something's going on because I see
pups and I'm like, whoa. And I will always love
a kiddie picture forever. I hope you hug those babies
super tight. Thank you for being an educator, as I said,
(32:41):
and I'm super honored that you would assign her stuff
for your students. Yeah, that's all I got. If you
would like to write to us, you can do so
at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also
subscribe to the show and become a PhD. And Stuff
you Missing History Class like Emily, is on the iheartrate
you app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Holly
Frye and I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Wilson.
Speaker 1 (00:16):
So I'm a little bit on an inventor kick again
at the moment, So yah, get ready for more in
the coming weeks. Today's inventor is somebody I stumbled across
and I kind of marveled at having never heard of
him because he worked in a field that I have
studied many of the other people. Little did I know
that I was walking into a hotbed of science, legal drama.
(00:40):
And then I got excited, But then I got bummed
because I also was way too deep into this one
to switch gears when I discovered the very very bummer
part of this story. So we are going to give
a trigger warning as we approach that very bummer part.
And as usual, it's not something we're going to linger
on or spend a lot of time on. But there
is a death by suicide in this episode. So Edwin
(01:04):
Howard Armstrong is not exactly a well known inventor, but
his work in radio literally changed communications around the globe.
I think we could also say we might not have
our jobs if he didn't do what he did, Yeah,
because we work for a company that does a lot
of radio. His most famous invention, which was FM radio,
(01:25):
became a source of constant frustration for him though after
he had developed it. So we're going to talk about
various inventions. We will give some basic layman's explanations, but
in terms of breaking them down in terms of how
they work at the nitty gritty level. If you want that,
you got to go somewhere else for it. I'm sorry.
And as we'll see in the course of the story,
(01:46):
people not understanding the way things work scientifically, and particularly
electrical engineering and radio, caused a lot of problems for
Armstrong in his life. Edwin Howard Armstrong was born to
Number eighteenth eighteen ninety in New York City in the
Chelsea neighborhood. His father, John, worked in publishing for Oxford
(02:07):
University Press, and his mother, Emily, had been a school
teacher until she married John. Like a lot of kids
born in the late nineteenth century, Edwin was fascinated by
all the modern technology around him, particularly as a child
growing up in Manhattan, where a lot of the latest
technology quickly found a lot of use He loved trains
(02:29):
and just about anything mechanical. His family moved to Yonkers,
New York when he was fourteen. He was always really
curious about science and scientists, but it was the news
of the first wireless message sent across the Atlantic by
Italian physicist Gulielmo Marconi that really got Armstrong excited and
set him down what would be his path in life.
(02:52):
Edwin Armstrong was so inspired by Marconi's invention that he
decided that he too, wanted to invent the things. Edwin
was a shy kid. Also, I should point out that
I have seen some biographies that referred to him as Howard,
which was his middle name. I don't know which he
went by. We're going by Edwin just because that is
his first name. We may be incorrect in that, but
(03:14):
he was either way a shy kid, and he readily
became absorbed in electrical and radio projects that he could
work on on his own. He apparently turned the family
attic into like his own lab, which he used for
years and years. Because unlike a lot of kids, he
did not lose interest in these efforts, and he did
not move on to other things. He retained his passion
(03:35):
for tinkering and discovery his whole life. He did do
other things as a teenager, like he played tennis, but
the drive to invent that was ever present. He built
crystal sets so basic radio receivers up in that attic
that could only pick up Morse code. There was really
nothing else for them to capture, and the weak's signal
(03:55):
that he was able to get on those crystal sets
made him intent that he should figure out how to
boost it.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
After finishing his studies at Yonkers High School in nineteen
oh nine, Armstrong enrolled at Columbia University in the Engineering School.
Part of the reason he went to Columbia was that
it was close to home, he could commute to school,
and he wouldn't have to break down any of his
ongoing experiments and projects that were underway in the family's attic.
(04:23):
Radio in particular, had become a big focus of Edwin's
curiosity and work. He noted later of choosing to concentrate
his energies in this field. Quote somehow, for reasons I
cannot recollect, the decision favored wireless. Now, of course, radio
in nineteen oh nine was not really a thing in
the sense that we would consider it Now, this is
(04:45):
when telegraphy and Morse code were still kind of at
the forefront. No one was sending sound across airwaves, but
they were very close. The first radio broadcast happened on
January thirteenth, nineteen ten, when an inv named Lee DeForest
broadcast a week signal from the New York Metropolitan Opera
house of Enrico Caruso singing. So not only was radio
(05:09):
an entirely new concept for Armstrong to jump into, but
some of its most exciting developments were happening in the
city where he was working on his own projects and
going to school. DeForest had invented a device called an
audion in nineteen oh six, and he patented that in
nineteen oh seven. The audion was a radio tube DeForest
(05:31):
had built on work that had been in process for
a while to get this tube to work. It consisted
of a cathode filament, an anodeplate, and a wire that
sat between the two. If you look at a photograph
of one of the first audions, you'll see what looks
like a light bulb with wires coming out of it.
The current between the filament and the anodeplate could be
(05:52):
modulated using that wire. Called a grid and that could
amplify sound. And while it worked, it did not work great. Additionally,
DeForest is sometimes described as having arrived at his invention
strictly through experimentation. He didn't really have a firm enough
grasp on the electrical science at play to explain why
(06:14):
this worked.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
This is going to come up again later. But here's
the thing. Edwin Armstrong did understand the science, or at
least he was determined that he was going to figure
it out. This time in Armstrong's life was written about
by J. H. Moorcroft in nineteen twenty two in an
article titled What Everyone Should Know about Radio History. The
(06:36):
section on Edwin includes the following quote. He was not
an especially brilliant student. In fact, in many of his
courses he did rather poorly. The writer knows because Armstrong
was one of his students. The characteristics of alternating current
machinery in general did not prove very enticing to the
young student, not because he was lazy or indifferent, but
(06:58):
because he had a hobby and a vision. He was
experimenting at his home with wireless apparatus and trying to
find out how the three electrode audion of DeForest worked.
If DeForest confessed in public that the action was too
mysterious for him to explain, then Armstrong would explain it
for him, which he promised to do and did very shortly.
(07:20):
That very shortly was no joke. Edwin had it all
figured out when he was still a college student. He
was able to invent a circuit that created much more
robust amplification. Armstrong had figured out during school break that
he could run a signal through the audion and then
back into its input to create what he called positive feedback.
(07:42):
His resulting circuit was called a regenerative circuit, sometimes also
called a feedback circuit, and it worked by a reported
factor of thousands. Then Armstrong realized that if he turned
his regenerative circuit to its highest level of amplification, it
became an oscillator and its own waves in or the words,
it was a broadcasting transmitter. This early success had been
(08:07):
made possible in part by Armstrong's mentor, a man named
Michael Pupin, who was a professor in the electrical engineering
department and who had seen something really special in Armstrong.
Poupin had allowed the student to use his lab. He
had recognized the reasons that the regular curriculum failed to
interest Armstrong, and he was also Edwin's champion when it
(08:29):
came to other professors at school and administrators who thought
he was just being arrogant or that he wouldn't apply himself.
Coming up, we'll.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
Talk about Armstrong's first hurtle of many in his career,
and that was paying for a patent application. But first
we will take a quick sponsor break.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
Naturally, Armstrong wanted to file a patent now application for
his invention of this circuit, and he asked his father
for help with the money for the application fee, but
John Armstrong refused, voicing concerns that he didn't want his
son to get sidetracked from finishing his education. Edwin was
really disheartened by his father's response, but he was also
(09:19):
an undeterred. He just turned to other family members and
even friends for money, and he promised that he would
repay them for any financial help they could offer. And
then he also had to sell his bike that was
how he commuted to school. But to him, all of
this was worth it. He filed his patent application in
nineteen thirteen, the same year he graduated from Columbia. Armstrong
(09:43):
was immediately offered a position as an assistant at Columbia,
and as an employee, he was able to install a
large demonstration antenna on campus to show Poopen and others
just how powerful his regenerative circuit was. He reportedly picked
up signals from as far away Hawaii with it.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
During World War One, Armstrong's reputation in the science community
landed him in Paris, where he worked for the US
Army Signal Corps. In a lab there in Europe, he
invented another circuit, the superheterodyne radio circuit, also called a superhead.
A superhead circuit changes a radio signal frequency from the
(10:22):
frequency it's received at to a lower frequency using a
mixer and oscillator. This results in an output that can
be more effectively filtered and processed. In terms of war applications,
this meant that weak signals could be cleared of background
noise and amplified. Armstrong had been allowed to use the
Eiffel Tower as part of his experimentation. Today, the superhead
(10:45):
is still a massive part of daily communications all over
the globe. In nineteen fourteen, Armstrong received his patent, but
the very young Armstrong did not have a lot of
time to be happy about it before he found that
he had a much older detractor of his work in
Lee DeForest. DeForest had actually seen one of Armstrong's demonstrations
(11:07):
and had seen how Armstrong's work had made his audion
truly function as an amplifier, but in his opinion, that
meant that he DeForest should be the one to get credit.
For a decade and a half, these two men would
go back and forth in papers, public statements, and after
the war lawsuits over who should get credit for inventing
(11:28):
the regenerative circuit. DeForest's argument was that from the beginning
he had heard what he described as a howling sound
in his audion, and he realized after seeing Armstrong's demonstration
that he had accidentally created positive feedback. This assertion was
not really supported by any of DeForest's own writing about
(11:51):
his invention. Prior to having seen Armstrong's work, he never
made any notes about a howling noise or mentioned it
to anybody, But he decided that he also needed to
file patent applications for what he claimed was his invention.
This resulted in Armstrong's patent being held in stasis for
a while as things were hopefully going to get sorted out.
(12:13):
But they did not sort out. They got a lot
more contentious.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
So recall that DeForest had publicly stated that he couldn't
really explain how his audion worked, and Armstrong, on the
other hand, had completely grasped the science he had. As
this rivalry was heating up, written papers about how his
regenerative circuit worked and changed the function of the audion.
There are pages and pages of back and forth between
(12:40):
the two men in the proceedings of the Institute of
Radio Engineers, after Armstrong had published a paper titled a
Study of Heterodyne Amplification by the Electron Relay. In one letter,
DeForest states, quote, I doubt if the simplicity of mister
Armstrong's explanations of audion phenomena is satisfying to those who
(13:00):
have extensively experimented with the audion. He then goes on
to reference a number of behavioral phenomena of the device
that Armstrong's work cannot explain, but they seem kind of
like outliers or malfunctions, including one where all of the
electrodes became incandescent. He then writes, quote, these are experimental
facts and not theory, and mister Armstrong must search more
(13:23):
deeply before the ultimate explanation of audion phenomena is revealed,
which honestly sounds like he almost thinks it's kind of magical.
He just does not understand what's happening, and he also
states that Armstrong was misinterpreting some of his writing. In response,
Armstrong wrote, quote in reference to doctor DeForest's discussion, I
(13:45):
feel that he must have failed in some way to
understand the present paper, because his discussion clearly seems to
apply not to the present paper, but to some of
the more fundamental and elementary matters which were published by
me several years ago. Part of a problem, he notes,
is that he Armstrong had backed another scientist, Fleming, when
(14:06):
DeForest had claimed that he had also infringed on one
of his ideas. It seemed that DeForest felt like everyone
was stealing his work. Things got really heated when the
AT and T company, which had purchased DeForest patents, got involved.
This is when the lawsuits began. Armstrong won some judgments
(14:27):
initially and then lost on appeal, and then additional suits
were filed and appealed, and on and on for fourteen
years from nineteen twenty to nineteen thirty four. This case
went before the Supreme Court twice. In testimony, it was
completely obvious to everyone that DeForest did not understand the
science behind his own invention the audion, But in the end,
(14:52):
a lack of understanding about the science and how it
was described in the patents led to the Supreme Court
justices ruling in faise of DeForest. That was something the
scientific community was outraged about.
Speaker 2 (15:06):
Perhaps most damning for DeForest was the fact that the
Institute of Radio Engineers did not recognize the court's decision.
The organization had given their medal of honor to Armstrong
several years before the final court battle, but when the
decision came down, Armstrong attempted to return it during one
of the group's annual meetings. He was instead met with
(15:28):
a standing ovation and a refusal to accept that return.
The entire engineering community, and especially those who had worked
in sciences related to radio, backed Armstrong publicly. So DeForest
may have won that case, but he became an outcast
in his industry in the process. Armstrong continued to be
(15:50):
honored with awards for his work on the regenerative circuit as.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
All of this was playing out. After World War One,
Armstrong had gone back to Columbia. He worked for physicist
Michael Pupin as his assistant. Pupin, as we had mentioned earlier,
had been one of Armstrong's teachers, and Edwin had just
immense respect for him. Armstrong also sold the patent rights
for the superheterodyne receiver as the radio boom was beginning
(16:16):
in the nineteen twenties, and as a consequence, he found
himself very wealthy very quickly, with ongoing income from stock
that had been included in those patent purchase deals.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
He also got married after the war. While working in Europe,
Edwin met a woman named Marian McInnis. She was working
as the secretary of a man named David Sarnoff, who
was a friend of Edwin's from Columbia and would later
go on to found the Radio Corporation of America or RCA.
Armstrong gave Marion an early portable radio as a wedding gift,
(16:50):
and the two of them, by all accounts, were very happy.
Together with his newfound millionaire status, Armstrong could have retired
early and just lived a life of leisure at that point,
but he didn't. He was still fascinated with radio, and
he was chasing a goal, which was radio without static.
(17:10):
He used his own money to pay for research on
the problem, which he tackled along with his mentor Poopem.
He collected no salary from Columbia because he had worked
a deal where in working for free, he was able
to focus exclusively on his lab work and not have
to be bogged down in any of the trappings of academia.
That meant no administrative duties, no teaching schedules. In nineteen
(17:34):
thirty three, Edwin Armstrong applied for four patents, all related
to the issue of eliminating static from radio waves. Prior
to this point, all radio was based on AM or
amplitude modulation. In an AM broadcast, the frequency is constant.
This is also called a carrier wave. The sound wave
(17:55):
the audio that's being transmitted, is added to that frequency
and the sound wave changes the amplitude of the wave.
Amplitude is a measure of the strength or intensity of
a wave. Sometimes people will also call it a height,
but that's what they mean. So when you're tuning in
AM radio, you are tuning to the frequency that's assigned
to the broadcaster you wish to listen to. FM on
(18:18):
the other hand, modulates the frequency, so obviously FM stands
for frequency modulation. Those changes in frequency are what carry
the signal, and when they shift the output device that's
speakers get a hit of voltage that transmits the sound.
So a station's call number or frequency actually has some
play on either side of it to allow for those
shifts that trigger the sound. It is a more complicated process,
(18:42):
but the resulting sound is clearer an Armstrong's new system.
With the modulated frequency of waves, the carrier wave was
more impervious to interference from things like electrical storms.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
We know today that Armstrong's invention did change communications, but
initially it did not seem destined for success, and we'll
talk about why after we hear from the sponsors that
keep stuff you missed in history class going. One might
(19:19):
expect that the superiority in fidelity that Armstrong's FM radio
was able to produce would be readily embraced. It sounded
so much better, But there were two problems. One was
that there was a belief in the science community, based
on some faulty science, that FM was not viable. They
thought Armstrong had actually been wasting his time. The other
(19:41):
problem was that even once its viability was apparent. It
ran into the issue that new technology is often met
with resistance, especially when it necessitates the need for new equipment,
and that was exactly what happened with FM. To prove
his FM radio worked, demonstrated it to the Institute of
Radio Engineers in nineteen thirty five. That gave them a
(20:05):
chance to hear this static free transmission from the remote
location of Yonkers. He demoed different kinds of sound. There
was speaking, of course, but.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Also live music and things like water being poured into
a glass. It was all clear as a bell, much
clearer than an AM transmission.
Speaker 1 (20:22):
That resistance that we mentioned a moment ago two FM's
adoption came quickly and aggressively. By the mid nineteen thirties,
there were already a lot of radio stations broadcasting AM radio,
and none of them wanted word to get out that
there was a superior technology. Meanwhile, Armstrong was like, this
should be free to everybody. One of the early signs
(20:45):
that things were going to be really rough actually came
from his friend David Sarnoff. Saranov had started RCA at
this point, and Armstrong had promised RCA first look an
option for any inventions he created, and to help Armstrong
win his work, Sarnov had let the inventor use the
top of the newly completed Empire State Building as a
(21:05):
testing space. But when Armstrong started talking publicly about FM
radio and its benefits, Saranov told him to take his
equipment down and get off the Empire State Building. RCA
was already positioned against Armstrong legally at this point, the
company was involved in that series of patent cases against
him in court, but up until this point, Armstrong and
(21:29):
Sarnov had remained pretty friendly. Until the FM reveal.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Some of the resistance against Armstrong's new form of radio
was fairly specific to time and place. This was in
the nineteen thirties, so the Great Depression is part of
the context of this. Industry leaders like Sarnoff, who knew
that Armstrong was working on the static problem, had anticipated
(21:55):
that he was going to come up with something that
improved on the existing A radio technology, which was also
tied to the very new development of television. So when
he showed up with a completely new system, it took
people by surprise. Companies were trepidacious about investing when the
markets were precarious. They believed that customers would be even
(22:19):
less willing to buy things like new radios when there
were already plenty of AM stations for them to listen
to on their existing radios. So while there was a
lot of pettiness in the mix, there were also some
legitimate financial and economic concerns.
Speaker 1 (22:36):
In response to the mix of detractors and some people
who seemed to be just willfully ignoring his new tech.
Like he could not get people to write about this
new FM radio, Edwin Armstrong once again persisted he really
believed in FM and he knew it was far superior,
so he decided to build his own radio station to
(22:58):
prove it. Was of course very expensive. The total cost
of the construction, which took place over several years, was
estimated to have been around three hundred thousand dollars, which,
with that caveat that translating value over time is very imprecise,
the estimates put that at pretty close to seven million
dollars to day of his own personal money. And to
(23:21):
make matters worse, then, the Federal Communications Commission refused to
issue him a permit for it. In return, Armstrong told
the FCC that he would just move to another country
and let them lead the industry into static free broadcasting,
and after that he did get his license. In nineteen
thirty nine, he began broadcasting from the first FM radio station,
(23:44):
W two XMN, which he had built in Alpine, New Jersey.
Its signal traveled farther than the FCC had anticipated and
with clearer transmission than any AM station could manage.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
The next year, RCA offered to buy ALFE since from Armstrong,
but he was only willing to issue them a royalties
based offer, and things did not go well. As Armstrong
was ready to really start showing what FM could do.
The United States entered World War II. Because he was
still one of the foremost experts in the country regarding
(24:18):
wireless communication, he was once again needed for research duty
for the war.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
Then, when the war was over Edwin returned to what
he considered his greatest achievement, FM, but things were only
getting worse in his battle to control the technology. After
he had turned down RCA's offer to buy a license,
the company had just gone right ahead and developed their
own FM technology without any sort of agreement with him,
(24:45):
and they actually brought FM radios to market, which was
something that violated his patents.
Speaker 2 (24:51):
Then, the FCC, which had come to acknowledge the superior
fidelity that FM could provide, had assigned FM a new
set of frequencies at the end of the war, claiming
it was for the technology zone good. But this switch
meant that all the existing radios were suddenly obsolete because
they had been manufactured to tune into the old band.
(25:15):
As part of this move, the maximum power of the
new band was reduced from that of the old ones,
so one of FM's primary benefits was basically erased. Additionally,
corporate entities conspired to take down Armstrong's idea that FM
should stay independent and not be owned by a corporation.
(25:36):
Under the guise of promoting FM, RCA and other networks
started broadcasting the programming that had been running on AM,
but they didn't charge advertisers for their time on the
FM broadcasts. That meant that independent FM stations had no
real leverage to get advertisers to pay to run shows
(25:56):
on their channel. They were getting FM ads for free
from the big names already.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
Armstrong tried to fight all of this in Congress, and
he had a number of politicians on his side. He
accused specifically RCA and NBC with infringement on his patents.
But though there were hearings, things dragged on with a
lot of mostly irrelevant questioning, and there didn't seem to
be any end or resolution in sight.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
As the nineteen fifties donned, the once wealthy Armstrong was
in a much less robust financial situation than he had
been earlier in his career. He had burned through his
fortune trying to convince established radio stations that FM was
a better option, and then to fight the many legal
battles that came with it. He and Marian had traditionally
(26:47):
held a party at Thanksgiving every year for all of
Edwin's engineering friends. After everybody had gone home, on the
night of the nineteen fifty three festivities, he and Marian
had a fight, something that was really unusual in their
thirty years together.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
The main crux of this argument seemed to be concerns
for their future in retirement. Maryan's sister and her sister's
husband had built a home in Connecticut on a farm,
and Marian wanted for Edwin to semi retire and for
them to also move to Connecticut. She had voiced concerns
that all of these legal battles and the radio station
and just all of it were draining what money they
(27:25):
had down to a point where this dream was kind
of slipping away. And after their argument in November nineteen
fifty three, she left their apartment and went to stay
with her sister, and the two of them remained apart
through the rest of the holidays.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
So heads up, we're getting to the death by suicide
that we mentioned at the top of the show, and
if you'd rather skip that, just jump ahead about three minutes.
By the beginning of nineteen fifty four, Armstrong was, it
is now believed, probably having a nervous breakdown. He had
started to act unlike himself, to the point that friends
were asking him if he was okay, and he told
(28:01):
them he was just under the weather. On January thirty first,
which was a Sunday, he spoke with his lawyer, Alfred McCormick,
as he did every morning. He checked in on a
friend whose wife was ill, and he made plans to
have drinks with another friend, but Armstrong no showed on
that date. Late that evening, he put on his hat
and coat and he jumped to his death from the
(28:21):
window of the couple's apartment the following morning. The news
was reported in a brief statement which circulated in numerous
papers and for several days after quote FM inventor dies
in fall. Major Edwin Howard Armstrong, sixty three, inventor of
the frequency modulation radio system, fell or jumped to his
death from the thirteenth floor apartment to the third floor
(28:43):
balcony of Riverhouse Apartment hotel today police reported. Police said
that Major Armstrong left a two page note addressed to
his wife, esther Marian, who was reported staying with friends
in Granby, Connecticut. The note, it was learned, expressed the
regret at dying this way and stated his love for
his wife. Major Armstrong also invented the superheterodyne and super
(29:05):
regenerative circuits, which are the basis of virtually all radio receivers.
Armstrong was buried in Marion's family plot in Merrimack, Massachusetts.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
They had also been married there in Marymack. In the
wake of her husband's death, Marion became a staunch defender
of the twenty one patent suits that he had filed.
Near the end of his life. The RCA and NBC
infringement suit settled out of court with the networks, paying
Armstrong's estate one million dollars. All of the other suits
(29:36):
ended in judgments in Armstrong's favor.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
On March sixth, nineteen fifty four, Armstrong's FM station played
the inventor's favorite music before a few closing remarks by
his lawyer, and then went off the air for good.
The Alpine, New Jersey, property where it was built was
eventually purchased by his alma mater and former employer, Columbia University,
which established the Armstrong Fields Stifle for Electronic Research there.
(30:02):
In addition to the lab, the building now houses an
exhibit of FM radio history. In nineteen fifty five, the
International Telecommunications Union made Armstrong one of its honorees in
recognition of his contributions to radio. One of their prior
honorees was the man who is often cited as inspiring
Armstrong's path as an inventor, Guglielmo Marconi.
Speaker 1 (30:27):
That's Edwin Armstrong.
Speaker 2 (30:29):
Do you also have some listener mail? I do.
Speaker 1 (30:32):
It's less sad than that. At the end. This is
from our listener, Emily. Although I don't know it might
make me cry, everything does, Emily writes. So I've been
listening for a long time. I think I started listening
before the two of you were the co hosts, so
that tells you this note is a long time coming.
Thanks for everything, seriously, thanks. There are so many episodes
(30:54):
that I've loved and so much I've learned from you
guys over the years. I'm always excited when you do
an episode on some I've learned about in the past,
especially if it's a place I've actually visited, and I
assign your episodes for my literature students and my honors
students as supplements to the text for reading. Thank you
for being an educator, and also I'm super honored, she continues.
(31:15):
I often sit and think I should write because so
many of the episodes speak to me or to my
experiences in so many ways. But your recent episode on
the Library of Congress and your conversation about it on
the behind the scenes episode finally gets me to do it.
Like you, I am frequently absolutely dismayed at the state
of things in the US, and I'm often at a
loss for what to do. But your episode reinforced for
(31:37):
me the idea that education, particularly in the humanities itself,
is a form of activism. I do this at the
local level as a college professor, and you guys do
this for a much wider audience. Thanks for everything you do,
and know that you're not alone in feeling dismay, but
also in leaning into the importance of learning about the past.
And then we get to pet tax. Here are my dog, Elsa,
(31:58):
a two year old goldendoodle, and my sweet menace of
a kitten named Bertie. She chirps a lot. While that
is her official name, she gets called a lot of
other things because my five year old son likes to
change her name on a regular basis. She has been called,
among other things, all off, buddy, kitty, bouncy, and Wushi Coushie,
my son's name for whoopy cushions. Signed Emily, Emily, thank
(32:19):
you for this beautiful letter. It's so sweet and I'm
so honored. And also this dog. You guys got to
stop saying I don't know if I have dog fever
or what. Right now, something's going on because I see
pups and I'm like, whoa. And I will always love
a kiddie picture forever. I hope you hug those babies
super tight. Thank you for being an educator, as I said,
(32:41):
and I'm super honored that you would assign her stuff
for your students. Yeah, that's all I got. If you
would like to write to us, you can do so
at History Podcast at iHeartRadio dot com. You can also
subscribe to the show and become a PhD. And Stuff
you Missing History Class like Emily, is on the iheartrate
you app or anywhere you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
Stuff you Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Stuff You Missed in History Class News
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Tracy Wilson
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