70th Anniversary FM Commemorative Broadcast

Anonym1ty writes "A special commemorative FM broadcast Saturday, June 11, at noon (EDT) will mark the 70th anniversary of Edwin H. Armstrong's first public demonstration of wideband frequency modulation (FM). The transmission, from Experimental Station WA2XMN (reminiscent of Armstrong's W2XMN call sign) will be on Armstrong's original 42.8 MHz frequency and will emanate from his landmark 400-foot Alpine Tower in NJ. The program will tell the tale of FM's difficult birth, as well as its impact on present-day communications and will include excerpts from a recording of a 1941 test broadcast of the New England Yankee Network. For those unable to receive 42.8 MHz FM, the broadcast is being retransmitted by WFDU-FM on 89.1 MHz and via the Web. Rebroadcasts will take place June 14 and 16 at 7 PM (EDT)"

Comments

Advantages of AM's susceptibility to interference

[G4from128k]

AM radio's susceptibility to interference makes it fun and useful for "listening" to electronics. For example, an AM radio will let you listen to transmissions on an ethernet cable and tell if it is plugged in and handling traffic. Old programmable calculators make the most interesting sounds as they chug through their calculations. Another plus is that you can hear lightening strikes from a great distance and listen as they approach or recede.

Lawrence Lessig wrote about Armstrong...

[Saint Aardvark]

...as part of his book Free Culture (available now if you sign up as a member of the Free Software Foundation. Do it today!). Before you think it's boring, or that things today are completely different from how they ever have been, read:

As our own common sense tells us, Armstrong had discovered a vastly superior radio technology. But at the time of his invention, Armstrong was working for RCA. RCA was the dominant player in the then dominant AM radio market. By 1935, there were a thousand radio stations across the United States, but the stations in large cities were all owned by a handful of networks.

....Armstrong's invention threatened RCA's AM empire, so the company launched a campaign to smother FM radio. While FM may have been a superior technology, Sarnoff was a superior tactician. As one author described, "The forces for FM, largely engineering, could not overcome the weight of strategy devised by the sales, patent, and legal offices to subdue this threat to corporate position. For FM, if allowed to develop unrestrained, posed ... a complete reordering of radio power ... and the eventual overthrow of the carefully restricted AM system on which RCA had grown to power."

....Armstrong resisted RCA's efforts. In response, RCA resisted Armstrong's patents. After incorporating FM technology into the emerging standard for television, RCA declared the patents invalid--baselessly, and almost fifteen years after they were issued. It thus refused to pay him royalties. For six years, Armstrong fought an expensive war of litigation to defend the patents. Finally, just as the patents expired, RCA offered a settlement so low that it would not even cover Armstrong's lawyers' fees. Defeated, broken, and now broke, in 1954 Armstrong wrote a short note to his wife and then stepped out of a thirteenthstory window to his death.

....This is how the law sometimes works. Not often this tragically, and rarely with heroic drama, but sometimes, this is how it works. From the beginning, government and government agencies have been subject to capture. They are more likely captured when a powerful interest is threatened by either a legal or technical change. That powerful interest too often exerts its influence within the government to get the government to protect it. The rhetoric of this protection is of course always public spirited; the reality is something different. Ideas that were as solid as rock in one age, but that, left to themselves, would crumble in another, are sustained through this subtle corruption of our political process.