FM Radio Demonstrated: Armstrong Changes the Airwaves

Edwin Howard Armstrong had been fighting for FM radio since 1933, and on January 5, 1940, he finally got his chance to demonstrate the technology to the Federal Communications Commission. The static-free signal stopped the commissioners cold. AM radio was plagued by interference from electrical equipment, thunderstorms, and atmospheric noise. FM eliminated all of it. The audio quality was so clearly superior that the technical case should have ended the debate on the spot. Armstrong was already one of the most important inventors in radio history. He had developed the regenerative circuit during World War I, superhetrodyne receiver technology that became standard in every radio, and the super-regenerative circuit. Each invention had been contested in brutal patent fights. By the time he turned to frequency modulation, Armstrong understood that technical superiority alone would not guarantee adoption. He was right to worry. RCA and its president, David Sarnoff, had invested heavily in AM broadcasting and television. FM radio threatened both. RCA lobbied the FCC to move FM to a different frequency band in 1945, a decision that rendered every existing FM receiver in America obsolete and forced stations to invest in new equipment. The frequency shift devastated the fledgling FM industry. Armstrong''s stations lost their audiences overnight. Sarnoff had once been Armstrong''s friend and business partner; the patent disputes and FM suppression turned the relationship into one of the most bitter rivalries in American business history. Armstrong spent his remaining years in litigation against RCA, burning through his fortune in legal fees. On January 31, 1954, he dressed in his overcoat, hat, and gloves, removed the air conditioner from his thirteenth-floor apartment window, and stepped out. His widow, Marion, continued the patent suits after his death and eventually won every single one. FM radio became the dominant broadcast medium by the 1970s. Armstrong was vindicated, but only after the industry that had destroyed him adopted the technology he had proved worked fourteen years earlier.