Edwin Armstrong – mister no static – invents FM radio – born Dec. 18, 1890

EDWIN HOWARD ARMSTRONG, born December 18, 1890, was pre-eminent electrical engineer, who through his extraordinary inventions, FM radio among them, contributed immeasurably to the advancement of wireless communications and broadcasting.

A brilliant engineer well ahead of his time, Edwin Armstrong fought all his life to champion the inventions that made modernradio possible. In contrast to many inventors (Edison included), Armstrong had a distinctly analytical mind. Instead of working by trial and error, he would proceed methodically toward identifying the root cause of a problem in order to find a path toward a solution. He placed his physical intuition above everything else, and in fact mistrusted results based only on mathematics; he knew well that those are only as good as the assumptions behind them, which do not always correctly model the physical world.

Edwin Howard Armstrong was born in Chelsea, New York City, in 1890. Shy as a child, perhaps because of a tic left by a bout of rheumatic fever, he often played alone. At fourteen, after his family moved to Yonkers, he became fascinated by the stories of great scientists and inventors, in particular those of Michael Faraday and Guglielmo Marconi. He resolved that he, too, would be an inventor. Like many boys his age at the beginning of the century, he became fascinated with the new art of wireless and began building crystal sets—the simple receivers that marked the beginning of the wireless age. Back then Morse code was the only thing one could listen to, and to make out the faint signals one had to wear headphones in a quiet room. He resolved to find a way to increase the volume of those signals and to pick them up from the greatest possible distance.

Armstrong graduated with a degree in electrical engineering in 1913 and was offered a position of assistant the same year. He hung a huge antenna between Philosophy, Havemeyer, and Schermerhorn halls and was able to demonstrate to an amazed Pupin reception of signals from as far away as Honolulu. More demonstrations followed, including one to a visiting group of engineers from American Marconi. This group included David Sarnoff ’66HON, who was to become Armstrong’s friend and, later, his nemesis. The beaming student tried to patent his invention. His father, worried that this sort of extracurricular activity would interfere with his son’s progress toward graduation, refused to give him the money. Armstrong had to borrow from relatives and friends and even had to sell his beloved red motorcycle—a high school graduation gift that he had been using to commute between Yonkers and Columbia. He applied for a patent in 1913, and this patent was issued the following year. Soon radios based on Armstrong’s invention began to appear. Radio communication had finally become practical. Armstrong rose to the rank of major, and the French government gave him access to the Eiffel Tower for his experiments and named him a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur. He filed for a patent for his superheterodyne circuit in 1918, and the patent was issued two years later. He sold this patent, as well as one for another invention—the superregenerative receiver—and by 1923 he was a millionaire. Now an assistant professor at Columbia, he decided to accept no salary from the University. In this way, he could avoid administrative work and even teaching and could devote his energies to research—and to his legal battles.

Armstrong was the victim of a world in which, as he eloquently put it, “men substitute words for realities, and then talk about the words.” Next time you turn on your FM radio or your cellular phone, think of that—and of him.

SOURCE: Columbia Univ. Mag.