Edwin Armstrong; J. Amador

His father sold Bibles and his mother was a schoolteacher, but from an early age Edwin Arm strong showed great aptitude for mechanical things, and by the time he was 14 he was set on a career in "wireless." Like other amateur radio enthusiasts at the turn of the century, Armstrong put together crude sets from coils and tubes, and spent countless hours in his Yonkers, New York, home listening intently for the faint dots and dash es of faraway Morse code transmissions. Jorge Amador is a freelance writer and editor of The Pragmatist, a current-affairs bimonthly. In 1912,during experiments to increase his set's reception power, Armstrong, then an electrical engineering student at Columbia University, devised an improvement over the existing Audion vacuum tube. The regenerative or "feedback" cir cuit, his first invention, amplified the strength of incoming signals hundreds of times, enough to do away with the bother of earphones and to pick up signals from across the Atlantic.

Six years later, as a captain in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, Armstrong was asked to find a way to intercept German military radio communica tions, which were transmitted in frequencies too high for Allied receivers. Out of his research came the superheterodyne, another circuit with greatly improved amplification which is still the standard in radio, television, and radar sets. Together, the regenerative and superheterodyne circuits made modern broadcasting possible and secured Armstrong's place in the annals of telecommunications. Among the select audience to whom Armstrong introduced the regenerative circuit was David Sarnoff, the future president of the Radio Corpo ration of America. The two became friends. Over the next decade, while Armstrong built his reputa tion as an inventor, Sarnoff rose to the top of RCA. One day in 1922Sarnoff, frustrated over the prob lem of static interference with radio broadcasts, said to Armstrong, "I wish that someone would come up with a little black box to eliminate static."

Armstrong was well aware ofthe problem. Sim ple static electricity, such as that caused by light ning and electrical appliances, overwhelmed stan dard AM signals,and there appeared to be no way to get rid of it. Radio engineers, in fact, were Edwin Armstrong as a young man, displaying his six bulb portable radio. resigned to it, and sought to reduce rather than eliminate static interference. "Static, like the poor, will always be with us," lamented one. But Armstrong found a way. The scope of this article doesn't permit a technical discussion, but the gist of Armstrong's discovery was this: Instead of modulating (varying) the amplitude (strength) of the radio wave, Armstrong proposed to modu late a different aspect, its frequency (hence the 127 term "frequency modulation"). FM transmissions, he discovered, weren't subject to interference from sources of static. The "little black box" was a whole new broadcasting technology.

The Advantagesof FM Armstrong's FM has other important esthetic and economic advantages over AM: (1) Because it operates on a wider frequency band, FM can reproduce almost the entire range of sound audible to the human ear, a feature we call high fidelity. (2) In a process known as multiplexing, used for instance to provide music for stores and offices, the wider band enables theFM operator to send more than one signal at a time. (3) Because of the way FM-generated waves propagate through the air,an FM station can serve a greater area than an AM station with the same power, or the same area with less power, making FM stations cheaper to operate. (4) Yet PM stations on the same frequency can be placed closer together geographically than AM stations, because unlike AM their signals don't interfere with each other. In FM we hear only the stronger station, rarely both at the same time. In 1933Armstrong took out four patents on PM and presented Sarnoff and RCA with his inven tion, hopeful that his friend would take the lead in promoting the revolutionary new medium. RCA decided to test it, and in March 1934invited Arm strong to set up his equipment at the company's Empire State Building facilities. Performance results exceeded Armstrong's claims.

Then, writes broadcast historian Erik Bamouw, in April 1935 the inventor "was 'politely' asked to remove his equipment. ... That same month RCA announced its allocation of $1,000,000for television tests." TV was the new rage; nothing more about FM was forthcoming from RCA for another four years. Armstrong was angry over being induced to waste his time by a company that had no interest in developing his invention. Determined to show the value of FM, Arm strong asked the Federal Communications Com mission (FCC) for spectrum space for further PM experiments and sought permission to build his own station. At hearings in 1936, Sarnoff con firmed Armstrong's suspicions. He testified against allocating space to PM and urged that it be 128 THE FREEMAN • APRIL 1990 givento televisioninstead. From RCA's perspective, the matter was simple. As put by Don V. Erickson, author of Armstrong's Fight for FM Broadcasting, "RCA did not own the patents on FM. It did own the patents on television."Thus the company stood to keep a greater share of any profitsto be made from televisionthan from FM radio. Moreover, since it was a vastly superior radio service, FM represented a threat to established AM opera tionsin whichRCA, as the parent company of the NBC network, had made great investments.

Thus,explainsErickson,"in almosteveryovert and covert action,it can be seen that RCA (and the majorityof the AM industry)were tryingdes perately to forestallsomethingthat would either cut down, or cut out, their operation." Not least among these effortswas to choke off PM's access to the airwaves,whichwas controlledby the FCC. SpectrumSocialism At thispointitis usefulto note that thisandsub sequentfightsforspectrumspacebetweenFM and televisionwere uniquelya productof government involvement.In the regimeof spectrumsocialism, under which"the public"is saidto "own"the air wavesandagovernmentagency(theFCC)admin Istersthem,thosewho wish to try a new broadcast service,even if they don't proposeto·take up fre quenciescurrentlyin use, must go to the FCC for permissionto operate. Absentthe FCC,if more than one set of opera tors wished to use the same general area of the electromagnetic spectrum, they could agree amongthemselvesto divideup the virginspacein question.Or theycouldsimplybeginindependent 1y to operate at specificfrequencies,establishby their use a claimto themas ifthe frequencieswere homesteadedterritory,and then if necessarytrade or sellfrequenciesto achievea consolidatedband.

In this way, there's room for everybody.Nobody can stake out all the possiblefrequenciesfor him self at once, or prevent another from stakingout his own space. Spectrumsocialism,however,makesthe alloca tion processcontroversial.It forces each party to thrash it out at the FCC,where the incentiveis to try to get everythingthat's available.After all, if you must go to the effort and expenseof making yourcaseat a hearing-and particularlyif you are in competitionwithothers-you mightas wellask for all the frequenciesat hand,in the hope of end ing up with more than you mightneed. Suddenly there's not enough room for everybody,"justify ing" the existence of the allocating agency that encouragedthe problem.With this approach,one man'sgainbecomesanother'sloss. Thesystemalsogivesyouthe chanceto shutout the competition by decree, as RCA attempted. EventuallytheFCCallocatedtelevision120mega cyclesfor experiments,whileFM receivedjust2.7.

The agency at first even denied Armstrong a licenseto builda·station,but finallyrelentedin the face of persistenteffortsby the inventor. Armstrongthen proceededto buildhis station, W2XMN at Alpine, New Jersey,to demonstrate PM's possibilities.Shortlyafter it begantransmit tinginJuly1939,interestinFM soared.Armstrong commissionedGeneral Electric to build 25 FM receivingsets at his own expense. GE liked the new mediumso much that it beganto prepare for mass production. The Yankee Network built another station in Massachusetts and began broadcastingin PM to New England. By the fall of that year,the FCC had more than 150applicationsto buildFM stations.The spaceit had parsimoniouslyallocated to FM three years before was plainlynot enough to satisfyexisting demand. FM had arrived. Meanwhile,television was a curiosityat the 1939World'sFair. As Fortune magazinecommented in October 1939: [W]hilegrantingthe reasonablenessof a cer tainhesitancy,the observercannothelpremark ingthat the industryhas beeninfuriatinglyreac tionary in its attitude towards Major Armstrong'sdevelopment. . .. . Moreover,the factthat RCA kept thisinventorhangingon the end of a string,without committingitselfdefi nitely,was certainlynot conduciveto progress on the technologicalfrontier. . . .

While the duty of the FCC in makingshort wave band allocationswas clearlyto get televi sion on the air as quicklyas possible,the Com mission's failure to understand frequency modulation,andto placethe properestimateon its technological importance, is just as deplorableas the industry'sfailureto push it. . . . WhatFM needsat the presenttimeaboveall thingsis an allocationthat will put it on a comEDWIN ARMSTRONG: GENIUS OF FM RADIO 129 mercial status and willat the same time be large enough to permit it to operate to full advantage. On May 20, 1940, the FCC finally gave rein to PM. It took Channell off the television band and allotted it to FM. The Commission assigned FM the frequencies between 42 and 50 megahertz, enough for 40 FM channels, and authorized com mercial service beginning January 1,1941. The future looked bright for FM. Other radio set manufacturers, including Zenith and Western Electric (but not RCA, as we shall see), arranged royalty deals. Despite the United States' entry into World War II, the number of commercial PM sta tions doubled from 18 in 1941 to 36 in 1942, and grew to 46 in 1945. According to Time magazine, more than a half-million FM radio receivers were then in use.

Then came a shocker: In January 1945the FCC proposed to kick FM up into the range of frequen cies around 100 megahertz, and to give television additional space in the vacated area. This precipi tated a third spectrum battle between FM and tele vision. The stated reason for the proposed move was the concern that, at FM's current frequencies, radio transmissions would be particularly vulnera ble to interference caused by sunspots. It was nec essary to make the move immediately, since the height of the next sunspot cycle was expected in 1948-49. The Commission called hearings for the spring of 1945. It established a Radio Technical Planning Board in several subcommittees to evaluate the proposed general spectrum reallocation. PanelS, which investigated the claims of sunspot interfer ence' found the evidence lacking and voted 27 to 1 against moving FM. The Board as a whole also rec ommended against the move.

Armstrong's biographer, Lawrence Lessing, notes that AM interests featured prominently in the pro-FM move camp: "But a long string of wit nesses, including representatives of CBS, ABC, Cowles Broadcasting, Crosley, Philco, Motorola, and DuMont, urged that PM be moved 'upstairs.'" Despite the findings of its own experts and the strenuous opposition of Armstrong and the FM industry, the FCC went ahead with the move in 1945, ostensibly on the basis of the testimony of one engineer who later admitted his calculations had been wrong. The FCC then assigned this band, from which FM radio was banished "for its own good," to television, which Lessing notes was "about twenty-five times more sensitive to any kind of interference than FM and which, more over, was still required to use FM on its sound channel." The dreaded interference never showed up, but the effect of the move on FM was disastrous. With one stroke the FCC "made obsolescent every FM radio receiver, every FM transmitter, and a major part of all FM equipment and tubes," writes Erick son. "Thus, with no new FM equipment on the lucrative postwar market and no advertisers to purchase time on the new band of frequencies, FM in its first ten years of existence was brought close to the brink of commercial death." Shortly after the FM shift was proposed, The New York Times reported that "The total investment of the country in transmitters, receivers and other [FM] para phernalia was estimated 'in the region of $50,000,000to $100,000,000.'" A spokesman for the Frequency Modulation Broadcasters Inc. pre dicted in February 1945 that the move "would cost prospective buyers of FM receiving sets $100,000,000more than if they would be permitted to buy sets now designed as soon as they could be made available after the war."

In a brief filed with the FCC, the broadcasters complained that "The change would cost a para lyzing delay during the postwar years when FM could move forward with great rapidity." The delay,in fact, would prove devastating. "FM prac tically had to start all over again," observed the Times' radio critic in 1949.Erickson describes the situation: As though [FM was] just invented, equipment had to be put on the drawing board and experi mented with to develop sophistication in these very high frequencies; stations had to be recon verted before they could program; and most drastic, the public had to be convinced all over again that PM was worth the purchase of anoth er radio. In this great postwar market, then, AM broadcasting was able to step in and fill part of the great demand for new entertainment, with television coming up a fast second. "The RCA-NBC forces ... rejoiced," adds Barnouw. "The new development tended to pro tect the status quo in radio while providing spec trum space for the expansion of television."

130 THE FREEMAN • APRIL 1990 More Controls The 1945 spectrum shift presaged a series of postwar decisions by the FCC, all founded upon the state's control over the airwaves, which tended further to hamstring the FM industry. That same year the agency approved a "Single Market Plan," proposed by another AM network, the Columbia Broadcasting System, to limit the power and reach of FM stations to a single city or market. The effect of this was to put FM at a further competitive disadvantage vis-a-vis AM. While many AM stations continued to be allowed to send their signals through "clear channels" across the continent, FM stations were prevented from attracting advertiser revenue by serving a wider area. Radio set manufacturers were prohibited by the FCC from easing the frequency transition by building sets that could tune in to both the old and the new bands. In April 1951,the Commission pro hibited FM stations from multiplexing signals to stores, offices,and other establishments, a nascent source of revenue for cash-starved operators. (The ban was lifted in July 1955.) Before the war the invisible hand of the market had pointed to a rosy future, but the iron fist of the state nearly choked FM at birth, then pushed it into the broadcasting wilderness for decades.

Three years after the spectrum shift, independent FM stations were reporting $1.1 million in total revenues-and $4.2million in expenses, for a stag gering loss of three times total revenue. FM's rev enue did not approach even half its expenses until 1952, and the industry as a whole did not begin to make a profit until 1976.Television and AM radio enjoyed the fruits of the postwar entertainment market. The number of TV stations jumped from 12 in 1947 to 494 in 1957, and AM stations increased from 1062 to 3008. Meanwhile nearly 200PM stations, which, despite the handicaps, had opened in postwar enthusiasm, found it necessary to close up shop. RCA, which first ignored FM and then asked the FCC to rule it out of the airwaves, eventually accepted the new medium asa fact of life and start ed to manufacture PM receivers, as well as televi sions with the required FM sound. Sarnoff had offered Armstrong a flat fee of $1,000,000 for a license to use his FM system when it was first approved for commercial use in 1940, but Armstrong preferred a royalty arrangement. Subse quently RCA tried to negotiate similar deals a number of times, but Armstrong always refused, on the grounds that it would be unfair to other manufacturers who were paying royalties on sales.

However, RCA had a firm policy of making cash settlements. RCA, writes Barnouw, "did not pay royalties; it collected them." The company patented a rival FM system it claimed was different from Armstrong's, and licensed that to other man ufacturers. So, although Edwin Armstrong held the basic patents on frequency modulation, RCA paid him nothing, and instead collected from oth ers. Armstrong's final battle was on. The inventor published a technical paper show ing that RCNs product embodied no new principle and was essentially a copy of his. In July 1948, he sued RCA and NBC for patent infringement. The pretrial proceedings dragged on for more than five years. "Armstrong, normally patient," writes Barnouw, "became a man possessed. All his energies came to be centered on the suit. Three o'clock in the morning would find him poring over transcripts. At all hours he called attorneys to dis cuss tactics."

The bitter, protracted struggle diverted Arm strong from his research, spent his fortune and health, and alienated his family and friends, who urged him to settle for his own sake. Late in Jan uary 1954, literally sick and tired, Armstrong sur rendered. He gave his lawyer the go-ahead· to explore a settlement. On the night of January 31, he dressed for the cold night and stepped out-out the window of his 13th-floor New York City apart ment. His body was found the next morning. A few months later, RCA paid Armstrong's estate $1,040,000and the case was closed. D For Further Reading: Erik Barnouw, The Golden Web: A History of Broad castingin the UnitedStates1933-1953(New York: Oxford UniversityPress,1968) Don V. Erickson,Armstrong'sFightfor FM Broadcast ing: One Man vs. BigBusinessandBureaucracy(University of AlabamaPress,1<J73) SydneyW. Head, Broadcastingin America:A Surveyof TelevisionandRadio(Boston:HoughtonMifflin,1<J72) EdwardA. Herron, Miracleof the Air Waves:A History ofRadio(New York:JulianMessner,1969) Lawrence P. Lessing, Man of High Fidelity: Edwin HowardArmstrong(Philadelphia:Lippincott,1956) Christopher H. Sterling,ElectronicMedia: A Guide to Trendsin Broadcastingand Newer Technologies1920-1983 (NewYork:Praeger,1984) Freeing Digital Audio by Jeff A. Taylor T echnical innovation has long been recog nized as a by-product of free societies. It is also true that these technical advances sometimes outstrip the development of legal sys tems. This often forces basic principles to be re-examined in light of the new developments.