Edwin Howard Armstrong (1890

Talk to Edwin Howard Armstrong

Have a conversation with this historical figure through AI

Biography

Edwin Howard Armstrong was an American radio-frequency engineer and inventor who developed FM radio and the superheterodyne receiver system.

Timeline

The story of Edwin Howard Armstrong, told in moments.

1918 Event

Patented the superheterodyne receiver while serving as a Signal Corps officer in France during WWI. The technology became the basis of virtually all modern radio and television receivers.

How did serving in WWI shape your inventions? Did war accelerate your thinking?

1933 Event

Patented FM radio. It eliminated the static that plagued AM broadcasts. RCA's David Sarnoff, once his friend, spent years trying to bury the technology to protect AM radio investments.

Why did Sarnoff try to bury FM radio? Did losing a friend to corporate greed change you?

1948 Event

Built his own FM transmitter in Alpine, New Jersey, after the FCC moved FM to a new frequency band that made all existing receivers obsolete. The regulatory battle bankrupted him.

What was it like building your own transmitter after the FCC undermined you? Was that defiance or desperation?

1954 Death

Jumped from his 13th-floor apartment window in Manhattan. He was 63. His patent battles with RCA were still unresolved. His widow continued the lawsuits and won every one.

Did the patent battles break you or was it something else? What would you want inventors to learn from your story?

In Their Own Words (3)

Anyone who has had actual contact with the making of the inventions that built the radio art knows that these inventions have been the product of experiment and work based on physical reasoning, rather than on the mathematicians' calculations and formulae. Precisely the opposite impression is obtained from many of our present day text books and publications.

As quoted in Electronics (2005) by P. Arun, p. 310, 2005

The world, I think, will wait a long time for Nikola Tesla's equal in achievement and imagination.

As quoted in the The Tesla Museum exhibition in Belgrade, and by the Tesla Memorial Society of New York

Men substitute words for reality and then argue about the words.

As quoted in "Edwin Armstrong : Pioneer of the Airwaves" by Yannis Tsividis

Artifacts (10)

Edwin H. Armstrong Papers

4 letters and 1 memorandum. Letter to the editor of Fortune Magazine (4 sheets, 4 pages), on printed letterhead of Columbia University in the City of New York, Department of Electrical Engineering, 10...

1949

Works Read Talk