On November 6, 1935, an engineer named Edwin Howard Armstrong stood before the Institute of Radio Engineers in New York. His paper carried a plain title: “A method of reducing radio disturbance through a frequency modulation system.”
What he unveiled was anything but plain. Armstrong had invented FM radio—a way to deliver sound without the crackle and static of AM. For the first time, voices and music could be heard with breathtaking clarity.
It should have been his triumph. Instead, it became his undoing.
Armstrong was no stranger to invention. He had already given the world the regenerative circuit and the superheterodyne receiver, technologies that made radio practical and reliable. But every breakthrough brought him into conflict with powerful corporations—AT&T, Westinghouse, and above all, RCA.
FM threatened RCA’s empire. They had poured fortunes into AM and weren’t about to see it eclipsed. Armstrong built his own FM network on frequencies between 42 and 49 MHz—a revolution in the making. But in 1945, after heavy lobbying, the FCC reassigned the FM band to 88–108 MHz, instantly making Armstrong’s system obsolete. Years of work were erased with the stroke of a pen.
Worse followed. FM stations were restricted to lower power, crippling their reach. RCA pushed television instead, while Armstrong was dragged through endless, ruinous lawsuits. His brilliance was buried under corporate pressure and legal battles.
On January 31, 1954, at 63 years old, Armstrong—exhausted and broken—penned a farewell letter to his wife, Marion. Then he stepped from the 13th floor of his New York apartment.
Yet every time we tune in to FM, we hear his legacy. The clear notes of a song, the clean tone of a human voice without static—that was Armstrong’s gift. He gave us silence between the noise.
History may have tried to silence him, but his invention speaks for him still.
