Edwin Howard Armstrong

At eight he caught Sydenham's chorea after a bout of rheumatic fever, withdrew from school for two years, and came out of it with a tic that stress made worse for the rest of his life. The family left Chelsea for Yonkers to improve his health, taking a house on Warburton Avenue that looked down on the Hudson, and his mother's family moved in next door. He enrolled at Columbia in 1909, worked under Michael Pupin at the Hartley Laboratories, and took an electrical engineering degree in 1913. He was still an undergraduate when he worked out what would happen if a vacuum tube's output were fed back into its own input, and on October 6, 1914 the patent office issued him number 1,113,149 for it.

Regeneration amplified a faint signal thousands of times over and, pushed one step further, turned the receiving tube into a transmitter. Serving with the Signal Corps in Paris during the First World War, he worked out the superheterodyne, the receiver architecture almost every radio and television set has used since. He sold super-regeneration to RCA in 1922 for 200,000 dollars and 60,000 shares of stock, which briefly made him the company's largest shareholder. Then, working in a basement at Columbia, he went after static itself. Five patents granted on December 26, 1933 covered wideband frequency modulation, which carries sound in the wave's frequency rather than its strength and arrives clean. He tested it from the 85th floor of the Empire State Building between May 1934 and October 1935, then paid for his own station at Alpine, New Jersey.

Lee de Forest claimed regeneration, and the fight ran through the courts for two decades. It reached the Supreme Court twice, in 1928 and 1934, and Armstrong lost both times. He tried to hand back the Medal of Honor the Institute of Radio Engineers had given him in 1917. The board would not take it and restated the award. FM went worse. RCA, deep into television, declined to build it, offered him a million dollars in 1940 for a non-exclusive royalty-free license, and was refused. On June 27, 1945 the FCC moved the FM band from 42 to 50 megahertz up to 88 to 108, which rendered 395,000 existing receivers useless overnight. He sued RCA and NBC in 1948 and went on suing. By November 1, 1953 he had to tell his wife the money was almost gone.

The argument that followed ended with him striking Marion on the arm with a fireplace poker. She left and did not return. Sometime in the night of January 31 to February 1, 1954, wearing his overcoat, hat and gloves, Armstrong went out a 13th-floor window of River House. The note said he was heartbroken at not seeing her once more, and closed by asking the Lord to have mercy on his soul. Marion took over the cases. Arbitration produced a settlement with RCA of about a million dollars in December 1954, and she kept winning through 1967, until the courts had said plainly FM was his. She founded the Armstrong Memorial Research Foundation in 1955 and died in 1979.

Edwin Howard Armstrong's life against the full span of the corpus.

• Regenerative circuit patent
  US patent 1,113,149, issued October 6, 1914. Amplification and, pushed further, oscillation. 1914
• Superheterodyne receiver invention
  Worked out on Signal Corps duty in Paris. Still the basic architecture of radio reception. 1918
• Super-regeneration invention
  Sold to RCA for 200,000 dollars and 60,000 shares of stock 1922
• Wideband frequency modulation patent
  Five patents granted December 26, 1933 1933
• W2XMN, Alpine, New Jersey building
  The first FM station, built and financed by him 1937

• 1898 aged ~8 Sydenham's chorea takes him out of school for two years He was left with a tic that returned whenever he was under strain.
• 1909 aged ~19 Enters Columbia and joins Michael Pupin at the Hartley Laboratories
• October 6, 1914 aged 23 Receives US patent 1,113,149 for the regenerative circuit
• 1922 aged ~32 Sells super-regeneration to RCA and becomes its largest shareholder 200,000 dollars plus 60,000 shares, later increased to 80,000.
• 1934 aged ~44 The Supreme Court rules against him a second time in the regeneration case He tried to return his 1917 IRE Medal of Honor. The board refused and reaffirmed it.
• December 26, 1933 aged 43 Five patents issue covering wideband frequency modulation
• 1937 aged ~47 Builds W2XMN at Alpine, New Jersey, with his own money
• June 27, 1945 aged 54 The FCC moves the FM band to 88 to 108 megahertz The shift made 395,000 receivers obsolete and cost FM years of momentum.
• 1948 aged ~58 Sues RCA and NBC for patent infringement
• February 1, 1954 aged 63 Found dead below a 13th-floor window of River House He had left a note for Marion. She took over his litigation and won.

• Lee de Forest 1873–1961
  Invented the Audion triode tube that enabled electronic signal amplification and early radio broadcasting. rival and litigant
• Philo Farnsworth 1906–1971
  Demonstrated the first fully electronic television system using his image dissector tube. fought the same company over patents
• Nikola Tesla 1856–1943
  Serbian-American inventor who developed alternating current electrical systems and numerous electrical innovations. earlier casualty of the patent courts
• Thomas Edison 1847–1931
  Inventor and scientist whose research laboratory model and electrical innovations transformed modern life. built the industry he sued
• Claude Shannon 1916–2001
  Mathematician and engineer who founded information theory, the basis of all digital communication. gave the noise problem its mathematics
• Edwin Land 1909–1991
  Scientist and co-founder of Polaroid who invented instant photography. independent inventor against the corporate lab