Early FM Radio: Incremental Technology in Twentieth-Century America

200 Pages·2010·2.34 MB·English

by  Gary L. Frost

contents
Acknowledgments ix
List of Abbreviations xi
Introduction What Do We Know about FM Radio? 1
1 AM and FM Radio before 1920 12
2 Congestion and Frequency-Modulation Research,
1913–1933 37
3 RCA, Armstrong, and the Acceleration of FM Research,
1926–1933 61
4 The Serendipitous Discovery of Staticless Radio,
1915–1935 77
5 FM Pioneers, RCA, and the Reshaping of Wideband FM Radio,
1935–1940 116
Conclusion 135
Appendix. FM-Related Patents, 1902–1953 143
Notes 155
Glossary 179
Essay on Sources 183
Index 187
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acknowledgments
The author wishes sincerely to thank the many individuals who kindly assisted
him in researching, writing, and critiquing this book. They include Alex Roland,
Michael McVaugh, Sy Mauskopf, John Kasson, Peter Filene, William Trimble,
Steven Niven, William E. Leuchtenberg, Dana Raymond, John Hepp IV, Stephen
Pemberton, Molly Rozum, Larry Wright, Michele Strong, Patrick Sayre, Mary
Jane Aldrich-Moodie, David Wunsch, Charles Ritterhouse, Mischa Schwartz,
Laura Moore, Anne Langley, Chuck Alley, Robert J. Brugger, Josh Tong, Donna
Halper, Harry Maynard, Janice Wright, Linda Schoener, Susan Douglas, Kristen
Haring, Brian MacDonald, Houston Stokes, Hans Buhl, David Burke, and James
Hoogerwerf, and Richard Boyle.
The Mellon Foundation, the IEEE History Center, and the Society for the His-
tory of Technology provided funding for this research project. Karen Maucher,
Robert Guy, Marco Greco, and David West helped the author obtain housing
while doing research in New York City.
The author also acknowledges the invaluable service provided by Alex
Magoun, of the David Sarnoff Library, as well as the librarians at the University
of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, Duke University, and North Carolina State
University, and the Columbia University Rare Books and Manuscripts Library.
Thanks also to the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library for allowing the use of
material from the Edwin Howard Armstrong Papers.
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abbreviations
AM amplitude modulation
AP Edwin Howard Armstrong Papers, Rare Book and
Manuscript Library, Columbia University
AT&T American Telephone and Telegraph Company
BBA Broadcasting-Broadcasting Advertising (magazine)
BTL Bell Telephone Laboratories
CBS Columbia Broadcasting System
CGTFS Compagnie Générale de Télégraphie Sans Fil (Paris)
cps cycles per second
EM electromagnetic
FCC Federal Communications Commission
FM frequency modulation
FMBI FM Broadcasters, Incorporated
FRC Federal Radio Commission
FSK frequency-shift keying
GE General Electric Company
IEEE Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers
IF intermediate frequency
IRE Institute of Radio Engineers
JHH John Hays Hammond Jr. (patent assignee)
NBC National Broadcasting Company
PIRE Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers
RCA Radio Corporation of America
RCAC RCA Communications Company, Inc.
RCAM RCA Manufacturing Company, Inc.
REL Radio Engineering Laboratories, Inc.
SSB single-sideband modulation
TGFDT Telefunken Gesellschaft für Drahtlose Telegraphie mbH
(Berlin)
WE Western Electric Company, Inc.
WEM Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company
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Early FM Radio
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introduction
What Do We Know about FM Radio?
It isn’t ignorance that causes the trouble in this world; it is the
things that folks know that ain’t so.
Edwin Howard Armstrong, quoting Josh Billings, 1944
This book presents a clean break from the traditional history of frequency-mod-
ulation radio. Some readers will open this volume because they already know the
canonical story of FM radio’s origins, one of the twentieth century’s iconic sagas
of invention, heroism, and tragedy. Possibly they learned it from Ken Burns’s 1992
documentary film, Empire of the Air, or from Lawrence Lessing’s “definitive” 1956
biography of FM’s inventor, Edwin Howard Armstrong: Man of High Fidelity.1 In
any event, all those who have written about the history of FM broadcasting tell
more or less the same story: In 1933 the U.S. Patent Office issued patents to Arm-
strong for his system of “wideband” frequency-modulation radio. More than a
decade earlier, everyone else had abandoned FM as impractical, but Armstrong’s
system astonished the world by suppressing static and reproducing sound with
far greater fidelity than AM radio did. The Radio Corporation of America tested
the Armstrong system and, after concluding that FM threatened its AM radio
empire, RCA not only declined to develop frequency modulation but also tried
to suppress it. Nevertheless, Armstrong persevered. Spending much of his per-
sonal fortune, he built an experimental broadcast station, which led to the Fed-
eral Communications Commission (FCC) establishing the first commercial FM
broadcast service in 1940. Afterward, as part of a strategy to cripple FM, RCA
refused to pay Armstrong royalties for his invention. In 1948 he sued RCA, a
move that cost him far more than he could have expected. Finally, in early 1954,