12/09/2025
The Tragic Genius Who Gave Us FM Radio
On November 6, 1935, engineer Edwin Howard Armstrong stood before the Institute of Radio Engineers in New York with a deceptively modest paper: “A method of reducing radio disturbance through a frequency modulation system.”
What he unveiled was nothing short of revolutionary: FM radio. Unlike AM’s crackle and static, FM carried voices and music with breathtaking clarity—pure sound that changed how the world would listen.
Armstrong was already a legend. He had given us the regenerative circuit and the superheterodyne receiver—the backbone of modern radio. But each invention brought him into battle with powerful corporate giants: AT&T, Westinghouse, and above all, RCA.
RCA saw FM not as progress but as a threat to its AM empire. Armstrong fought back, even building his own FM network on the 42–49 MHz band. It was a revolution in the making—until 1945, when heavy corporate lobbying persuaded the FCC to shift FM to 88–108 MHz. In a single move, Armstrong’s system was made obsolete. Years of work, erased.
The blows kept coming. FM stations were capped at low power. RCA funneled its fortunes into television. Lawsuits dragged Armstrong into financial ruin. His brilliance was buried under corporate greed and legal warfare.
On January 31, 1954, at age 63, Armstrong—exhausted and broken—wrote a farewell note to his wife, Marion, and leapt from the 13th floor of his New York apartment.
And yet—every time you turn on the radio and hear a song without static, every time a human voice comes through the airwaves clean and true—you’re hearing Armstrong’s gift.
⚡ He gave us silence between the noise. And though history tried to silence him, FM speaks his name still.
🤔 Do you think Armstrong’s struggle proves that true innovation will always clash with powerful interests—or that brilliance can ultimately outlive the forces that try to bury it? (Dimitrios A. Karras, Athens, Greece)
Sources:
Lawrence Lessing – Man of High Fidelity: Edwin Howard Armstrong.
FCC Archives – FM Band Reassignment (1945)
Institute of Radio Engineers Proceedings, 1935