Man of High Fidelity: EDWIN HOWARD ARMSTRONG A Biography – By Lawrence Lessing With a new forward by the author Page iii Pratt DISCLAIMER DISCLAIMER TO THIS SCANNED AND OCR PROCESSED COPY This PDF COPY is for use at Pratt Institute for Educational Purposes Only I affirm that sufficient print copies of the original Bantam Book Paperback are in stock in ARC E-08 that would more than adequately cover a full class use of the text. HOWEVER, due to the fact that the 1969 text is no longer in publication, complicated by the fact that these copies are forty-four (44) years old and in a very fragile condition, this PDF version of the text was created for student use in the Department of Mathematics and Science. - Professor Charles Rubenstein, January 2013 Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong EDWIN HOWARD ARMSTRONG Was the last – and perhaps the least known – of the great American Inventors. Without his major contributions, the broadcasting industry would not be what it is today, and there would be no FM radio. But in time of mushrooming industry and mammoth corporations, the recognition of individual genius is often refused, and always minimized. This is the extraordinary true story of the discovery of high fidelity, the brilliant man and his devoted wife who battled against tremendous odds to have it adopted, and their long fight against the corporations that challenged their right to the credit and rewards. Mrs. Armstrong finally ensured that right nearly ten years after her husband’s death. Page i Cataloging Information Page This low-priced Bantam Book has been completely reset in a type face designed for easy reading, and was printed from new plates. It contains the complete text of the original hard-cover edition. NOT ONE WORD HAS BEEN OMITTED. (bantam logo here) MAN OF HIGH FIDELITY A Bantam Book / published by arrangement with J. B. Lippincott Company PRINTING HISTORY Lippincott edition published November 1956 Bantam edition published Match 1969 All rights reserved. Copyright © 1956, 1969 by Lawrence Lessing. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by Mimeograph or other means, without permission. For information address: J. B. Lippincott Company, East Washington Square, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 10105. Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, Inc., a subsidiary of Grosset & Dunlap, Inc. Its trade-mark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a bantam, is registered in the United States Patent Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, Inc., 271 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10016. PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Page iv 2 Revision 1: This document is available electronically at: http://www.CharlesRubenstein.com/490/References/Armstrong.pdf Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong (Dedication Page) To Yvonne Page v Contents page TEXT PDF EDWIN HOWARD ARMSTRONG i 2 Inside Cover iii 1 Pratt PDF Disclaimer 1 Cataloging info page iv 2 Dedication v 3 Contents vii 3 Foreword ix 4 Preface to First Edition xiii 6 1 The Attic Inventor 1 7 2 A Child in the Nineties 6 10 3 The Boy Wireless Operator 14 15 4 The Undergraduate Genius 23 21 5 The Inventive Act 34 28 6 "Feedback" Armstrong 49 37 7 The Signal Corps Major 64 45 8 The Superheterodyne Feat 77 53 The Progress of Radio - Schematics 82-90 56-61 9 Young Man of the Twenties 99 67 10 Armstrong vs. de Forest 127 84 11 The FM Comeback 157 103 12 The Defender of the Human Ear 174 114 13 The Second War 205 133 14 The Last Battle 231 149 15 The Expense of Greatness 249 161 16 Final Vindication 258 166 Bibliography 271 174 Page vii 3 Revision 1: This document is available electronically at: http://www.CharlesRubenstein.com/490/References/Armstrong.pdf Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong Foreword One of the extraordinary but not widely known tales of American invention is the story of FM or frequency-modulation radio. No major invention of recent times has had a longer, harder, more heroic struggle for existence than this system of high-fidelity broadcasting. Today, some thirty-five years after its conception, FM finally has won legal and historical vindication of such magnitude as to lay to rest any doubts as to its authenticity and great worth. This is a fitting occasion, therefore, for reissuing this life of the inventor, which was first published shortly after his despairing death by suicide in 1954, and which is now brought triumphantly up to date. FM was conceived about 1933 by Edwin Howard Armstrong, a noted professor of engineering at Columbia University and a recognized genius in electronic circuitry. He had contributed to early radio two basic circuits, the regenerative or feedback circuit and the superheterodyne, which are' still at the heart of nearly all modem radio-television transmitters and receivers. When he sought permission in 1935, however, to erect an experimental FM station to demonstrate the unusual qualities of his new radio system, he ran into a stone wall. The Federal Communications Commission dismissed FM out of hand as "a visionary development," arid denied him a permit. The standard radio networks operating on AM or amplitude modulation were equally indifferent. "Who needs a second method of broadcasting?" they said. It took Armstrong nearly five years to get his experimental station constructed, after threatening to take his invention to a foreign country. Though FM proved to be as remarkable a new system of broadcasting as its inventor claimed, still, for nearly another quarter of a century, it was blocked by one regulatory device or another from reaching its free, full throated development. The full story is here. What sustained FM through these years of commercial opposition and regulatory complicity was the fact that it was indeed a superior system of broadcasting, aurally and technically, to all who had ears to hear. The most striking demonstration, then as now, was to hear an FM program coming in crystal clear through a clatter of thunderstorms and electrical disturbances that turned ordinary radio reception into a nightmare of shattering discharges and steady background noise like frying eggs. In addition to its noise-suppression qualities, the wide- swinging FM wave also was capable of carrying the full frequency range of sound perceptible to the human ear, giving it a depth and naturalness unknown to ordinary AM radio. Over the years, these qualities attracted a constantly growing band of discriminating listeners and dedicated FM broadcasters, the most persevering of which came to form the National Association of FM Broadcasters to promote FM's independent development. By 1960-tragically too late for the inventor to witness it - the tide began to turn for FM. For one thing, the FCC began to right some of the inequities. In 1961 it authorized the use of a split-band system of stereophonic broadcasting over FM channels, a technique whose underlying feasibility Armstrong had demonstrated in an historic multiplexing experiment as early as 1934. It further enhances FM's superior sound. This development, plus normal cumulative growth, has pushed FM to new heights. Some fifty million radio sets equipped with FM are now in use in the U.S., and this number is expected soon to exceed those with AM reception only. The number of FM stations on the air now reaches some 1,700, offering a wide range of programs, and their sale price steadily rises, indicating a marked economic change for the better. The fact is that FM was 4 Revision 1: This document is available electronically at: http://www.CharlesRubenstein.com/490/References/Armstrong.pdf Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong technically ready and waiting to further the current revolution in stereophonic disc and tape recording and in sophisticated listening. Meanwhile, FM has moved upward and onward in other directions. Earlier, it had swept the field of mobile radio, such as that employed in police, emergency, and military field communications, where FM's low power requirements and noise reduction made it outstanding. FM also came to dominate microwave relay operations, the system by which TV network programs, multiple telephone messages, and private communications are beamed cross-country from a series of towers spaced about thirty miles apart. More recently FM has sparked a newer form of microwave system known as tropospheric scatter communications, which allows spacing of towers up to 600 miles apart and is now widely used in building highly secure U.S. military communication systems around the world. Finally, from the launching of the first U.S. earth- orbiting space satellite, FM has taken the lead in satellite communications. From this position, FM is likely to have a profound impact on all radio-TV communications through the rest of the century. The greatest achievement of these later years is the total personal vindication they have brought to the inventor. At his death, Howard Armstrong was in the midst of a mammoth, seemingly hopeless legal battle with a potent group of radio manufacturers who had refused to recognize him as the inventor of wideband FM, and who were attempting to break his patents and evade all payment of royalties for their widespread use of the invention. With great canniness, loyalty, and perseverance, his widow, Marion Armstrong, and his attorney, Dana M. Raymond, quietly continued the battle. Late in 1967, nearly fifteen years later, they won the last of a long line of infringement suits, winning twenty-one out of twenty-one entered, for perhaps the most unprecedented string of legal vindications ever obtained for an inventor. This story, too, is here.