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