Armstrong Memorial Foundation

We think of an inventor, especially an inventor at the turn of the century, as a lone person, in his garret, working very hard and finally coming up with the "Eureka!" invention. But, in fact, all of the great inventions in the late nineteenth century and twentieth century weren't made that way. They were made by lone inventors, to be sure, who were piloting through a sea of harassing lawsuits. Think about the telephone, for example: Alexander Graham Bell, of course, invented the telephone, but a man named Draubaugh took a case right to the US Supreme Court, and lost by only a one-vote margin to Bell. It was a completely preposterous case--Draubaugh's invention was the equivalent of a string between two teacups--but, nevertheless, it went to the Supreme Court.

Howard Armstrong grew up with the myth of the boy working alone in the garret, making the great invention, and he faced the reality of men bringing their financial interests into a series of harassing suits. This would ultimately bring him down. Armstrong was a precocious fellow, far ahead of his professors. He was a student at Columbia University from 1909 to 1912, in the new field of electrical engineering, and commuted every day from Yonkers as fast as he could on a Red Indian motorcycle. Armstrong made a special habit of showing his professors up, sometimes giving them quite serious electrical shocks and burns as a result. He was always on the edge--and the professors whom he surpassed disliked him. But there were several others at Columbia who understood the value of his talent, and they pushed to make him an adjunct professor and instructor after he graduated. That began a lifelong association with Columbia University.

All four of Armstrong's major discoveries occured within a 21-year period. Learn more about when these were made and how they influenced the development of radio.

This is regeneration, in a very simplified form. Armstrong drew the designs for it and filed a patent, which was later invalidated by the Supreme Court on two different occasions. Even though every engineer knows regeneration was invented by Howard Armstrong, the invalidation is emblematic of the Armstrong story, because Armstrong was frustrated again and again by legal forces.

When he first created regeneration, Armstrong went to a stationery store at Lenox Avenue and 123rd Street and had his drawing for the invention notarized. But there were dozens of fraudulent people at that time claiming inventions that would increase the signal for radio and wireless. Chief among them was a man named Lee De Forest.

In 1907, Lee De Forest invented what we would call the radio tube. De Forest was the inventor, but it was as if he had merely stumbled across Captain Kidd's treasure. He did not understand what he had created, he did not understand the power of what he had created, and he didn't really understand how it worked. He proved this time and again in court cases.

The Houck Collection

One of Armstrong's de Forest Audions, ca. 1912

Armstrong went after De Forest early on, while he was still a student. De Forest gave a lecture at Columbia about his radio tube. That evening, by showing De Forest that he did not understand the very tube that he had created, Armstrong began a lifelong angry discussion with him that ended in serious litigation. Nevertheless, when the value of Armstrong's regeneration circuit came to the fore (with the creation of the radio as we know it, after 1920), Lee De Forest sued him and claimed to have created regeneration. The suit went to the Supreme Court twice and, in 1933, the court decided in De Forest's favor for the second and final time.

Armstrong served as an Army major in the First World War. During the war he created the superheterodyne, which, simplifying greatly, is the name for the tuner on a television or a radio set. He showed, in that single invention, that he understood basic electrical principles better than anyone else. This invention was taken away from him by a Frenchman named Lucian Levy, to whom Armstrong later lost a court battle.

In 1922, Armstrong created the super regeneration circuit, an invention that has never been fully exploited, though it is used to identify military planes today. It's an invention that future scientists ought to think about putting to work. Although it didn't have much practical value for radio, it was bought by the new company on the block, the Radio Corporation of America, or RCA Victor, and Armstrong became the single largest private shareholder in RCA.

Armstrong was very smart when it came to finances. He knew when to get into the market, and when to get out of the market. He got out just at the right time, in June 1929. By that time, he was very wealthy and was working at Columbia as a dollar-a-year man.

Armstrong was a very close friend of a man named David Sarnoff, who was rising at the Marconi Company and its successor, the Radio Corporation of America. On February 1, 1914, Sarnoff and Armstrong spent the night in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, picking up signals from all around the world with Armstrong's regeneration circuit. The Marconi Company got a report from Sarnoff saying, "I've just picked up signals from San Francisco, from Portland, Oregon, from Seattle, and this is a great circuit for Marconi to buy." The Marconi Company wasn't interested, but Armstrong and Sarnoff became friends, and that began a very important connection between them.

By 1928, Armstrong had been knocked out of the regeneration circuit. RCA was riding supreme. On Christmas Eve, 1933, Howard Armstrong brought David Sarnoff to Columbia's Philosophy Hall, where, in Armstrong's lab, there were two rooms full of equipment containing the first FM receiver and transmitter. Armstrong said, "You wanted radio without static, and here it is. I want you to have this for RCA."

In 1933, RCA was financially on the ropes. They were working on the development of television--Sarnoff had labs at the top of the new Empire State Building and was trying to broadcast TV signals from there. RCA was having a great deal of trouble coming up with an electronic camera. At the same time it was being funded by its NBC radio broadcasts and by sales of cheap, crummy little radios.

	Thinking Point
	Today, nearly all radios, televisions and computers rely on at least one of Armstrong's inventions. List three ways that you benefit from Armstrong's inventions in your everyday life.

Armstrong had an invention that would wipe out static on radio, and Sarnoff saw that it would also wipe out RCA and make all the radios in America obsolete. All the money for RCA was coming through NBC and its affiliated stations around the country. With shows like "Amos and Andy," NBC was like a big money tree that RCA was harvesting to fund its research in television. Armstrong had a great invention and Sarnoff knew he had to do his best to stop it. At the same time, they were very close friends, dating back to February 1, 1914. Every year on that day, Armstrong sent a telegram to Sarnoff--there's one from 1934 in existence, saying, in effect, "This is the night we first met and how wonderful it was and it's created this long and enduring friendship." But that friendship devolved into anger and hatred over the years.

Armstrong had an intense energy--it seemed he had the power to go through a brick wall with the intensity of his mind. He used that power to go after RCA, which, between 1934 and 1954, essentially did everything it could to stonewall the development of FM. At the same time, after the Second World War, television was catching on, and the FCC declared that all televisions had to have a wideband FM receiver for sound. Armstrong stood to make lots of money. But RCA had infringed on Armstrong's patents for FM, and ultimately it stole them.